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EARTH-HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


William  Graham  Sumner 
[1902] 


'( 


EARTH-HUNGER 

AND 

OTHER   ESSAYS 


BY 
WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 


EDITED   BY 

ALBERT  GALLOWAY  KELLER 


NEW  HAVEN:  YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON:  HUMPHREY  MILFORD 

OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MCMXin 


COPYRIGHT,     1913 
BT    TALE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS 


FIB9T    PRINTED    N  O  V  E  If  B  E  B,     1913.       1,000    COPIES 


Copyright  1888,  by  The  Cosmopolitan 

Copyright  1887,  1888,  1889,  1890,  by  The  Independent 

Copyright  1889,  by  D.  Appleton  &  Company 

Copyright  1878,  by  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons 

Copyright  18S4,  by  The  North  American  Review 


H 


3^ 


PEEFACE 

During  the  three  years  now  elapsed  since  the  publica- 
tion of  "  War  and  Other  Essays,"  it  has  become  increas- 
ingly clear  to  the  publishers  and  to  the  editor  of  that 
collection  that  their  original  enterprise  should  be  followed 
up  by  another  volume  or  two.  There  remain  a  number 
of  Professor  Sumner's  shorter  productions  which  have 
never  been  printed  or  which  have  been  published  in 
obscure,  scattered,  or  inaccessible  places. 

I  feel  this  need  of  extending  our  enterprise  the  more 
strongly  because  I  believe  that  a  great  deal  of  Sumner's 
writing  has  not  grown  old,  and  is  not  destined  to  grow 
old.  It  has  been  impressed  upon  me,  as  I  have  become 
more  familiar  with  his  essays  of  twenty  and  thirty  years 
ago,  that  the  issues  which  he  treated,  as  he  treated  them, 
are  always  and  everywhere  with  us.  They  are  not  of  one 
time  or  one  place.  They  are  always  with  us  because  they 
are  part  of  what  Sumner  so  often  calls  "life  here  on 
earth."  It  was  given  to  him  to  seize  upon  social  issues 
in  their  essential  and  vital  bearings;  the  blade  of  his 
insight  never  stuck  in  the  husk  of  a  matter. 

Now  it  has  seemed  to  me,  in  my  own  experience  with 
Sumner,  and  in  my  teaching,  that  such  an  attitude  toward 
the  questions  of  societal  life  is,  for  the  young  at  least,  the 
one  best  adapted  to  open  —  wrench  open,  if  you  will  —  the 
gates  of  the  mind  and  introduce  the  impulse  to  independ- 
ent thinking.  I  do  not  mean  at  all  that  this  result  is  to 
be  attained  by  an  unresisting  acceptance  of  the  forcefully 
expressed  opinions  of  a  compelling  reasoner;  in  fact,  I 


vi  PREFACE 

believe  that,  in  the  case  of  Sumner,  many  a  man  has  been 
goaded  to  think  things  out  for  himself  for  very  rage  at 
the  conclusive  manner  in  which  Sumner  used  to  dispose 
of  some  of  his  pet  or  traditional  notions.  Sometimes 
such  a  man  came  to  agree  with  Sumner;  again  he  believed 
that  he  had  won  the  right  not  to  assent  —  but  in  either 
case  there  had  come  to  him  an  awakening  in  the  matter 
of  his  own  mental  powers  and  life.  This  is  why  so  many 
men  who  have  eventually  come  to  dissent  from  Sumner's 
positions,  yet  look  back  upon  him  as  an  intellectual 
awakener.  The  difficult  thing  about  getting  a  vision  in 
the  large  is  in  the  attainment  of  an  elevated  plane  of 
thought;  if  someone  can  lift  you  to  it,  you  will  find  room 
enough  there  to  range  away  from  the  exact  spot  upon 
which  you  were  originally  set  down.  It  is  the  "Hft" 
which  is  crucial  — and  that  it  is  which  only  the  strong 
and  positive  man,  who  has  wrought  himself  up  beyond 
the  pull  of  the  trivial  and  traditional,  can  give. 

I  lay  a  good  deal  of  stress  upon  these  considerations 
because  they  are  the  ones  which  have  led  me  to  continue 
the  task  of  editor.  I  see  no  reason  for  collections  of 
essays  as  such;  the  work  of  most  of  us,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
must  die  with  us,  or  before  us  —  it  would  even  be  a  dis- 
service to  galvanize  it  into  a  momentary  resurrection. 
But  I  feel  that  this  is  not  so  with  Sumner's  work,  and  so 
I  think  it  a  privilege  to  assist  in  making  it  more  readily 
available  in  more  permanent  form. 

But  this  leads  me  to  add  that,  although  I  hold  the 
views  I  have  tried  to  express,  I  have  yet  excluded,  at  least 
for  the  present,  Sumner's'treatment  of  certain  issues  which 
seem  to  me  more  technical  and  local.  I  have  therefore 
included  little  on  the  topics  of  protectionism  and  sound 
money,  and  on  other  subjects  of  a  more  strictly  economic 
order  —  although  I  believe  that  a  number  of  Sumner's 


PREFACE  vii 

essays  of  this  type  deserve  re-publication,  and  should  get 
it,  for  the  sake  of  his  method  of  presentation  and  the 
breadth  of  his  perspective  rather  than  for  the  sake  of 
adding  to  technical  economic  controversy  in  any  possible 
way. 

The  following  essays  are  here  printed,  so  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  discover,  for  the  first  time:  The  Teacher's 
Unconscious  Success;  The  Scientific  Attitude  of  Mind; 
Earth  Hunger;  Economics  and  Politics;  Purposes  and 
Consequences;  Rights;  Equality.  We  have  been  able  to 
date  all  of  these  except  the  last  three.  There  is  no  direct 
evidence  as  to  the  time  when  these  were  written,  but  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  they  come  out  of  the  period  between  1900 
and  1906.  The  manuscript  of  these  three  seems  to  form 
part  of  the  studies  which  preceded  "  Folkways  "  and  may 
have  been  designed  originally  to  form  part  of  that  volume. 

Although  "Earth  Hunger"  is  the  title  essay,  it  has 

seemed  fitting  to  introduce  this  volume  with  Professor 

Sumner's  brief  autobiographical  sketch,  and  by  two  essays 

which,  if  not  strictly  autobiographical,  yet  reveal  certain 

salient  characteristics  of  the  man  and  of  his  attitude 

toward  his  work. 

A.  G.  KELLER 
New  Haven,  Conn., 
September  17,  1913 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

ALL  rights  on  the  essays  in  this  work  are  reserved  by  the 
holders  of  the  copyright.  The  pubHshers  named 
in  the  subjoined  list  are  the  proprietors,  either  in  their 
own  right,  or  as  agents  for  the  author  of  the  Essays  of 
which  the  titles  are  given  below,  and  of  which  the  owner- 
ship is  thus  specifically  noted.  The  Yale  University  Press 
makes  grateful  acknowledgment  to  the  Publishers  whose 
names  appear  below  for  their  courteous  permission  to  in- 
clude in  the  present  work  the  Essays  of  which  they  were 
the  original  publishers. 

Yale  Uioversity  Press 


The  Cosmopolitan:  "First  Steps  toward  a  Millennium." 
The  Independent:  "Is  Liberty  a  Lost  Blessing?"  "Who 
is  Free.?  Is  it  the  Savage .'^ "  "Who  is  Free?  Is  it  the 
Civilized  Man?"  "Who  is  Free?  Is  it  the  Millionaire?" 
"Who  is  Free?  Is  it  the  Tramp?  "  "Liberty  and  Respon- 
sibility," "Liberty  and  Law,"  "Liberty  and  Discipline," 
"Liberty  and  Property,"  "Liberty  and  Opportunity," 
"Liberty  and  Labor,"  "Does  Labor  Brutalize?"  "Liberty 
and  Machinery,"  "The  Disappointment  of  Liberty," 
"Some  Points  in  the  New  Social  Creed,"  "An  Examina- 
tion of  a  Noble  Sentiment,"  "The  Banquet  of  Life," 
"Some  Natural  Rights,"  "The  AboHtion  of  Poverty," 
"The  Boon  of  Nature,"  "Land  Monopoly,"  "A  Group  of 
Natural  Monopolies,"  "Another  Chapter  on  Monopoly," 
"The  Family  Monopoly,"  "The  Family  and  Property," 


X  PREFATORY  NOTE 

"The  State  and  Monopoly,"  "Democracy  and  Plutoc- 
racy," "Definitions  of  Democracy  and  Plutocracy,"  "Con- 
flict of  Democracy  and  Plutocracy,"  "Democracy  and 
Modern  Problems,"  "Separation  of  State  and  Market," 
"Social  War  in  Democracy."  Messrs.  D.  Appleton  & 
Company:  "  What  is  Civil  Liberty? "  Messrs.  Chas. 
Scribner's  Sons:  Combined  with  "Books  and  Reading 
for  the  Young,"  by  J.  H.  Smart.  "What  Our  Boys  Are 
Reading."  The  North  American  Review:  "Sociological 
Fallacies." 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface    v 

axjtobiogbapht  [1903] 3 

The  Teacher's  Unconscious  Success 9 

The  Scientific  Attitude  of  Mind 17 


Earth  Hunger 31 

Purposes  and  Consequences 67 

Rights 79 

Equality 87 

First  Steps  Toward  a  Millennium  [1888] 93 


LIBERTY 

[1887-1889] 

What  Is  Civil  Liberty? 109 

Is  Liberty  a  Lost  Blessing? 131 

Who  Is  Free?    Is  It  the  Savage? 136 

Who  Is  Free?    Is  It  the  Civilized  Man? 140 

Who  Is  Free?    Is  It  the  Millionaire? 145 

Who  Is  Free?    Is  It  the  Tramp? 150 

Liberty  and  Responsibility     156 

Liberty  and  Law 161 

Liberty  and  Discipline 166 

Liberty  and  Property 171 

Liberty  and  Opportunity 176 

Liberty  and  Labor     181 

Does  Labor  Brutalize? 187 

Liberty  and  Machinery 193 

The  Disappointment  of  Liberty 198 


xii  CONTENTS 


FANTASIES   AND   FACTS 

Some  Points  in  the  New  Social  Creed 207 

An  Examination  of  a  Noble  Sentiment 212 

The  Banquet  of  Life 217 

Some  Natural  Rights 222 

The  Abolition  of  Poverty 228 

The  Boon  of  Nature 233 

Land  Monopoly 239 

A  Group  of  Natural  Monopolies 245 

Another  Chapter  on  Monopoly 249 

The  Family  Monopoly 254 

The  Family  and  Property 259 

The  State  and  Monopoly 270 


DEMOCRACY 

Democracy  and  Plutocracy 283 

Definitions  of  Democracy  and  Plutocracy 290 

Confuct  of  Plutocracy  and  Democracy 296 

Democracy  and  Modern  Problems 301 

Separation  of  State  and  Market     306 

Social  War  in  Democracy 312 

Economics  and  Poutics 318 


The  Power  and  Beneficence  of  Capital  [1899] 337 

Sociological  Fallacies  [1884] 357 

What  Our  Boys  are  Reading  [1880] 367 


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL   SKETCH  OF 
WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH  OF 
WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

I  WAS  born  at  Paterson,  N.  J.,  October  30,  1840. 
My  father,  Thomas  Sumner,  was  born  at  Walton-le-Dale, 
Lancashire,  England,  May  6,  1808.  He  came  to  the 
United  States  in  1836.  My  mother  was  Sarah  Graham. 
She  was  born  in  Oldham,  England,  in  1819,  and  was 
brought  to  the  United  States  by  her  parents  in  1825. 
She  died  when  I  was  eight  years  old.  This  is  about  all 
I  know  of  my  ancestry.  My  father  told  me  that  he  had 
seen  his  own  great-grandfather,  who  was  a  weaver  in 
Lancashire.  They  were  all  artisans  and  members  of  the 
wages  class.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  I  am  the  first  of  them 
who  ever  learned  Latin  and  algebra.  My  grandfather 
had  a  good  trade,  which  was  ruined  by  machinery. 
On  account  of  this  family  disaster,  my  father  was  in 
every  respect  a  self-educated  man,  and  was  obliged  to 
come  to  America.  His  principles  and  habits  of  life  were 
the  best  possible.  His  knowledge  was  wide,  and  his 
judgment  excellent.  He  belonged  to  the  class  of  men, 
of  whom  Caleb  Garth  in  Middlemarch  is  the  type.  In 
early  life  I  accepted,  from  books  and  other  people,  some 
views  and  opinions  which  diflFered  from  his.  At  the 
present  time,  in  regard  to  those  matters,  I  hold  with  him 
and  not  with  the  others. 

In  the  year  after  I  was  born  my  father  went  prospect- 
ing through  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  and  New  York.  He 
came  back  convinced  that,  if  a  man  would  live  as  poorly 
and  educate  his  children  as  badly  in  the  East  as  he  would 


4  EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

have  to  in  the  West,  he  could  do  as  well  in  the  East.  He 
moved  to  New  England,  lived  in  New  Haven  a  year  or 
two,  and  settled  in  Hartford  about  1845.  I  was  educated 
in  the  public  schools  of  that  city.  I  was  clerk  in  a  store 
for  two  years,  but  went  back  to  school  to  prepare  for 
college. 

After  graduating  I  went  at  once  to  Europe.  I  passed 
the  winter  of  1863-64  in  Geneva,  Switzerland,  studying 
French  and  Hebrew.  In  April,  1864,  I  went  to  Gottin- 
gen,  where  I  studied  ancient  languages  and  history.  In 
April,  1866,  I  went  to  Oxford,  where  I  studied  AngHcan 
theology.  In  that  year  I  was  elected  tutor  at  Yale  and 
entered  upon  the  duties  in  September. 

I  was  ordained  Deacon  in  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  at  Trinity  Church,  New  Haven,  December  27, 
1867.  I  resigned  the  tutorship  in  March,  1869,  to  become 
assistant  to  the  Rector  of  Calvary  Church,  New  York 
City.  From  September,  1870,  to  September,  1872,  I 
was  Rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Redeemer,  at  Morris- 
town,  N.  J. 

In  June,  1872,  I  was  elected  Professor  of  Political  and 
Social  Science  in  Yale  College.  My  life  has  been  spent 
since  that  time  in  trying  to  fulfil  the  duties  of  that  posi- 
tion. From  1873  to  1876  I  was  an  alderman  of  the  city 
of  New  Haven.  In  1876  I  was  one  of  the  "visiting 
statesmen,"  who  were  sent  to  New  Orleans  to  try  to  find 
out  what  kind  of  a  presidential  election  they  had  in 
Louisiana  in  that  year.  This  is  the  whole  of  my  experi- 
ence in  politics.  I  found  out  that  I  was  likely  to  do  more 
harm  in  politics  than  almost  any  other  kind  of  man, 
because  I  did  not  know  the  rules  of  the  game  and  did  not 
want  to  learn  them.  Therefore,  the  adepts  at  it  could 
play  with  me  in  more  senses  than  one.  My  experience, 
however,  has  been  very  valuable  to  me.    It  has  enabled 


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH  5 

me  to  gauge  the  value  of  the  talk  we  hear  about  "civics" 
and  * '  citizenship. ' '  I  turned  back  to  the  studies  connected 
with  my  college  position,  and  have  devoted  myself 
entirely  to  them.  Those  studies  have  expanded  so  rapidly 
and  greatly  that  I  have  been  compelled  during  the  whole 
thirty-two  years  to  narrow  the  range  of  my  work  more 
and  more.  I  have  renounced  one  branch  after  another 
in  order  to  concentrate  my  efforts  on  what  I  could  hope 
to  master.  In  this  process  I  have  had  to  throw  away  a 
great  amount  of  work,  which  I  could  never  hope  to  finish. 
When  I  was  fifty  years  old  I  broke  down  in  health.  I 
have  only  partly  recovered,  and  have  been  obliged  to 
limit  my  interests  as  much  as  possible  to  the  college  work. 
I  am  now  trying  to  bring  into  form  for  publication  the 
results  of  my  studies  in  the  science  of  society.  If  life 
and  strength  hold  out,  this  will  be  the  sum  of  what  I 
shall  have  accomplished.  The  life  of  a  professor  is  so 
simple  and  monotonous  that  I  know  of  no  other  "his- 
tory" of  it  that  is  possible,  than  what  I  have  just  written. 
No  other  life  could  have  been  so  well  suited  to  my  taste 
as  this.  My  relations  with  students  and  graduates  have 
always  been  of  the  pleasantest,  and  I  think  that  there 
can  be  few  relations  in  life  which  can  give  greater  satis- 
faction than  these. 


THE   TEACHER'S    UNCONSCIOUS    SUCCESS 


THE  TEACHER'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SUCCESS 

Our  respected  friend,  in  honor  of  whom  we  are  met  to- 
day, furnishes  me  the  first  illustration  of  the  sentiment 
you  have  ofiFered  me.  I  remember  him  as  he  used  to 
visit  the  schools  of  Hartford  forty-five  or  fifty  years  ago 
when  I  was  a  boy  in  one  of  them.  We  schoolboys  were 
familiar  with  his  figure  and  I  recall  him  distinctly  as  we 
used  to  see  him.  Our  teachers  honored  him  and  taught 
us  to  honor  him.  In  some  way  which  we  did  not  under- 
stand he  embodied  the  care  and  providence  which  was 
giving  us  our  schooling.  We  then  attributed  to  him 
more  patriarchal  dignity  perhaps  than  he  then  deserved. 
We  know  now  that  he  first  introduced  some  system  and 
regularity,  some  economy  of  time  and  money,  into  the 
old  happy-go-lucky  system  of  the  district  schools,  but 
my  mind  goes  back  with  more  affection  and  reverence 
still  to  the  man  who,  in  my  childhood,  seemed  to  be  the 
responsible  moving  agent  of  the  whole  school  system. 
We  thought  that  he  would  not  work  for  us  unless  he  loved 
us  and  he  seemed  to  have  a  fatherly  care  for  all  the  school 
children  in  the  State.  He  never  spoke  to  me  and  I  pre- 
sume never  let  his  eyes  rest  on  me,  but  I  have  to  thank  him 
for  a  part  of  the  inspiration  which  has  entered  into  my  life 
and  work.     I  am  a  part  of  his  unconscious  success. 

This  case  leads  us  to  reflect  how  much  of  this  kind  of 
success  every  faithful  worker  in  the  cause  of  education 
wins  without  knowing  it;  and  is  it  not  the  best  success  of 
a]\?  We  warn  ourselves  and  we  are  warned  by  all  our 
critics  that  education  is  something  far  different  from 


10        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

schooling.  Unfortunately  they  do  not  necessarily  go 
together.  Unfortunately  also  our  people  are  pinning 
their  faith  on  schooling.  The  faith  in  book-learning  is 
one  of  the  superstitions  of  the  nineteenth  century  and 
it  enters  for  a  large  part  into  the  bequest  which  the 
nineteenth  century  is  about  to  hand  over  to  the  twentieth. 
On  the  walls  of  our  schoolroom  our  teacher  had  pasted 
up  in  large  letters:  "Knowledge  is  power."  Yes,  that 
is  what  knowledge  is.  It  is  power  and  nothing  more. 
As  a  power  it  is  like  wealth,  talent,  or  any  power,  that  is, 
it  is  without  any  moral  element  whatever.  The  moral 
question  always  comes  in  when  we  ask,  in  respect  to  the 
man  who  has  power:  What  will  he  do  with  it?  It  is  so  of 
wealth.  The  man  who  has  it  can  realize  purposes  which 
are  entirely  impossible  to  the  man  who  has  it  not.  What 
purposes  will  the  holder  of  wealth  choose?  If  he  chooses 
one  set  of  purposes  he  may  bring  things  to  pass  which  the 
rest  of  us  can  only  dream  of  and  wish  for.  If  he  chooses 
another  set  of  purposes,  he  will  be  only  so  much  the  greater 
curse  to  himself  and  all  around  him  than  he  would  be  if 
he  were  poor.  The  same  is  true  of  talent.  The  same  is 
true  of  any  other  power.  It  is  true  of  knowledge.  The 
man  who  has  it  is  equipped  for  action  both  with  tools  and 
weapons.  What  will  he  do  with  it?  If  he  so  chooses 
he  may,  by  virtue  of  it,  be  far  more  useful  to  himself,  his 
children,  and  his  country  than  he  would  be  without  it, 
but  if  he  chooses  otherwise,  he  may  simply  be  a  far  more 
efficient  and  harmful  rascal  than  he  would  be  without  it. 
This  is  why  it  is  simply  a  crude  and  empty  superstition  to 
believe  that  a  knowledge  of  reading,  writing,  arithmetic, 
and  geography  makes  good  husbands  and  fathers  and 
citizens.  It  does  not.  There  is  no  connection  of  cause 
and  efifect.  In  truth,  half-culture  is  one  of  the  great 
curses   of   our  time.    Half-culture  makes  man  volatile 


THE  TEACHER'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SUCCESS      11 

and  opinionated.  It  makes  them  the  easy  victims  of 
fads  and  fallacies  and  makes  them  stubborn  in  adhering 
to  whims  which  they  have  taken  up.  It  makes  them 
impervious  to  reason  and  argument  because  they  hold  to 
their  pet  ideas  with  a  pertinacity  which  has  a  great  deal 
of  vanity  in  it.  It  makes  them  quick  to  talk  and  slow 
to  think  or  study.  We  sometimes  rejoice  in  the  amount 
of  reading  that  our  people  do  in  newspapers,  magazines, 
and  light  literature,  and  we  are  multiplying  libraries  and 
reading-rooms  with  an  easy  confidence  that  it  is  all  in  the 
right  direction.  It  is  like  other  human  devices,  however; 
it  is  in  the  main  good,  but  it  is  not  all  good.  There  is 
one  disturbing  reflection  which  we  must  take  earnestly 
to  heart.  If  a  people's  desire  for  literary  food  is  met  by 
light  literature,  it  is  satisfied  and  put  at  rest  by  light 
Uterature,  and  then  there  is  no  desire  or  energy  to  get 
anything  better.  The  argument  against  novel  reading 
which  we  used  to  hear  forty  years  ago,  has  almost  entirely 
died  out,  but  it  had  some  sense  in  it,  on  this  ground  if  no 
other.  The  consumption  of  vast  masses  of  diluted  literary 
food  destroys  the  tone  of  the  intellect  and  the  moral 
stamina  also. 

Such  observations  and  reflections  as  these  force  us 
back  again  to  our  resources  of  moral  strength.  Where 
do  they  lie?  Without  disparaging  the  value  of  homi- 
letical  instruction  and  exhortation,  it  will  be  admitted 
by  everybody  that  it  takes  character  above  everything 
else  to  make  character.  Here  is  where  the  personality 
of  the  teacher  has  a  transcendent  function  in  connec- 
tion with  imparting  book-learning.  The  school  educates 
the  teacher  quite  as  much  as  it  educates  the  scholars. 
The  life  and  work  together  under  forms  which  involve 
discipline  and  orderly  co-operation  cannot  go  on  with- 
out  friction   which   tells   upon   both   parties.     The    in- 


12         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

cidents  of  the  schoolroom  easily  provoke  the  temper 
or  the  vanity,  the  jealousy  or  the  rancor  of  the  teacher. 
Who  does  not  know  what  pitiless  critics  scholars  are, 
how  sharply  they  detect  evidences  of  human  weakness, 
and  what  severe  standards  they  employ?  Even  parents 
are  exposed  to  no  such  criticism.  They  are  shielded,  and 
presumptions  are  created  in  their  favor  which  teachers 
do  not  enjoy.  When  it  comes  to  demands  upon  character 
there  is  no  profession  and  no  relation  in  life  which  makes 
such  heavy  demands  as  teaching. 

It  would,  of  course,  be  absurd  to  make  superhuman 
demands  on  teachers,  and  exaggerated  demands  could 
have  no  other  effect  than  to  discourage.  Such  is  not  the 
point  to  which  my  thoughts  tend.  On  the  contrary  I 
have  in  mind,  in  what  I  say,  the  encouraging  fact  that  a 
faithful  teacher  who  is  always  trying  to  do  the  best  possi- 
ble is  sure  to  enjoy  a  large  measure  of  success  of  which 
he  or  she  is  not  conscious.  When  I  look  back  to  my  own 
school-days  I  know  that  two  or  three  of  my  teachers  had 
decisive  effect  upon  my  character  and  career,  yet  I  have 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  one  of  them  knew  that  it 
was  so  or  was  to  be  so.  We  had  one  teacher  whom  I 
never  saw  put  in  a  difficult  position  but  what  he  extricated 
himself  from  it  in  such  a  way  that  we  all  felt  that  that 
was  just  the  right  way  to  act  in  an  emergency  of  that  kind. 
That  is  the  way  in  which  character  is  educated  by  char- 
acter. Its  fruits  are  abundant,  and  the  crop  of  them  is 
produced  over  and  over  again  for  many  a  year  afterwards, 
and  it  is  planted  and  gathered  by  many  workers  over 
many  fields. 

I  was  led  into  this  line  of  thought  by  my  recollections 
of  our  honored  guest.  I  think  that  the  reflections  I  have 
suggested  may  be  welcome  to  him  in  the  retrospect  of  a 
long  career,  during  which,  no  doubt,  he  has  had  many 


THE  TEACHER'S  UNCONSCIOUS  SUCCESS      13 

failures  and  disappointments  to  lament.  Like  all  the 
rest  of  us  he  has,  no  doubt,  felt  that  the  results  of  his 
labors  were  not  what  he  hoped  for  and  had  a  fair  right  to 
expect.  Let  me  assure  him  that  there  has  been  more 
fruition  than  he  has  been  aware  of.  It  is  the  chief  purpose 
of  this  meeting  to  assure  him  of  it  and  to  give  him  that 
explicit  proof  of  it  to  which  he  is  entitled. 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  ATTITUDE  OF  MIND 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  ATTITUDE  OF  MIND » 

I  HAVE  undertaken  the  duty  of  addressing  you  for  a 
few  moments  in  order  to  welcome  you  to  this  society  and 
also  to  make  some  suggestions  which  seem  appropriate 
to  the  beginning  of  your  connection  with  it.  What  we 
expect  this  society  to  do  for  you  is,  that  it  shall  confirm 
your  devotion  to  true  science  and  help  to  train  you  in 
scientific  methods  of  thought  and  study. 

Let  us  begin  by  trying  to  establish  a  definite  idea  of 
what  science  is.  The  current  uses  of  the  term  are  both 
very  strict  and  very  loose  or  vague.  Some  people  use 
the  term  as  a  collective  term  for  the  natural  sciences; 
others  define  science  as  orderly  knowledge.  Professor 
Karl  Pearson,  in  his  Grammar  of  Science,^  does  not  offer 
any  definition  of  science,  but  he  tells  the  aim  of  science 
and  its  function. 

"The  classification  of  facts  and  the  formation  of  abso- 
lute judgments  upon  the  basis  of  this  classification  — 
judgments  independent  of  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the  indi- 
vidual mind  —  is  peculiarly  the  scope  and  method  of 
modern  science.  The  scientific  man  has  above  all  things, 
to  strive  at  self-elimination  in  his  judgments,  to  provide 
an  argument  which  is  as  true  for  each  individual  mind  as 
for  his  own.  The  classification  of  facts,  the  recognition  of 
their  sequence  and  relative  significance  is  the  function  of 
science,  and  the  habit  of  forming  a  judgment  upon  those 
facts  unbiased  by  personal  feeling  is  characteristic  of 
what  we  shall  term  the  scientific  frame  of  mind."    These 

^  Address  to  initiates  of  the  Sigma  Xi  Society,  on  Mar.  4,  1905.      *  P.  6. 


18        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

statements  we  may  gladly  accept  so  far  as  they  go,  but 
they  are  not  definitions  of  science. 

I  should  want  to  make  the  definition  of  science  turn 
upon  the  method  employed,  and  I  would  propose  as  a 
definition:  knowledge  of  reality  acquired  by  methods 
which  are  established  in  the  confidence  of  men  whose 
occupation  it  is  to  investigate  truth.  In  Pearson's  book, 
he  refers  constantly  to  the  opinions  and  methods  of 
scientific  scholars  as  the  highest  test  of  truth.  I  know  of 
no  better  one;  I  know  of  none  which  we  employ  as  con- 
stantly as  we  do  that  one;  and  so  I  put  it  in  the  definition. 
I  propose  to  define  science  as  knowledge  of  reality  be- 
cause "  truth  "  is  used  in  such  a  variety  of  senses.  I  do  not 
know  whether  it  is  possible  for  us  ever  to  arrive  at  a 
knowledge  of  "the  truth"  in  regard  to  any  important 
matters.  I  doubt  if  it  is  possible.  It  is  not  important. 
It  is  the  pursuit  of  truth  which  gives  us  life,  and  it  is  to 
that  pursuit  that  our  loyalty  is  due. 

What  seems  to  me  most  important  is  that  we  should 
aim  to  get  knowledge  of  realities,  not  of  phantasms  or 
words.  By  a  phantasm  I  mean  a  mental  conception 
which  is  destitute  of  foundation  in  fact,  and  of  relations 
to  the  world  of  the  senses.  In  the  Middle  Ages  all  men 
pursued  phantasms;  their  highest  interest  was  in  another 
world  which  was  a  phantasm,  and  they  were  anxious 
about  their  fate  in  that  world.  They  tried  to  provide  for 
it  by  sacraments  and  rites  which  were  fantastic  in  their 
form,  and  in  their  assumed  relation  to  the  desired  end. 
They  built  up  a  great  church  corporation  and  endowed 
it  with  a  large  measure  of  control  of  human  affairs  so 
that  it  could  provide  for  welfare  in  the  other  world.  It 
had  special  functions  which  were  fantastic  with  reference 
to  the  end  which  they  were  to  accomplish  because  they 
contained   no   rational   connection   between   means   and 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  ATTITUDE  OF  MIND        19 

ends.  All  the  societal  power  which  the  church  did  not 
have  was  given  to  the  Emperor,  because  in  a  certain  text 
of  Scripture  mention  was  made  of  "two  swords."  The 
historical  period  was  spent  in  a  war  between  the  Pope 
and  the  Emperor  to  see  which  should  rule  the  other. 
The  Crusades  were  an  attempt  to  realize  a  great  phan- 
tasm. Chivalry  and  the  devotion  to  women  were  phan- 
tasms. The  societal  system  was  unreal;  it  assumed  that 
men  were  originally  in  a  state  of  slavery  and  that  all 
rights  which  they  had  were  due  to  gift  from  some  sove- 
reign. It  resulted  that  only  two  men  in  the  world,  the 
Pope  and  the  Emperor,  had  original  and  independent 
rights.  The  relation  of  classes,  parties,  and  corporations 
in  the  society  was  therefore  both  loose  and  complicated. 
It  is  amazing  to  notice  the  effect  of  all  this  attention  to 
unrealities  on  all  the  products  of  the  Middle  Ages.  People 
had  no  idea  of  reality.  Their  poetry  dealt  with  arbitrary 
inventions  and  demanded  of  the  reader  that  he  should 
accept  tiresome  conventions  and  stereotyped  forms. 
They  formed  ideas  of  Cathay  such  as  we  meet  with  in 
the  Arabian  Nights,  and  they  were  ready  to  believe  that 
there  might  be,  in  Cathay,  any  animal  form  which  any- 
body's imagination  could  conceive,  and  any  kind  of  a 
human  figure,  for  instance,  one  with  a  countenance  on 
the  elbows  or  the  knees.  Theologians  quarreled  about 
whether  Jesus  and  his  disciples  abjured  property  and 
lived  by  beggary,  and  whether  the  blood  which  flowed 
from  the  side  of  Jesus  remained  on  earth  or  was  taken  up 
to  heaven  with  him.  The  most  noticeable  fact  is  that  all 
the  disputants  were  ready  to  go  to  the  stake,  or  to  put 
the  other  party  to  the  stake,  according  as  either  should 
prove  to  have  the  power.  It  was  the  rule  of  the  game  as 
they  understood  it  and  played  it.  It  was  another  strik- 
ing manifestation  of  the  temper  of  the  times  that  within 


20        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

a  few  days  after  the  capture  of  Antioch,  the  poets  in  the 
several  divisions  of  the  successful  army  began  to  write 
the  history  of  the  conflict,  not  according  to  facts,  but 
each  glorifying  the  great  men  of  his  own  group  by  ascrib- 
ing to  them  great  deeds  such  as  the  current  poetry  ascribed 
to  legendary  heroes.  What  could  more  strikingly  show 
the  absence  of  any  notion  of  historic  reality? 

Now,  if  you  compare  our  world  of  ideas  with  that  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  the  greatest  difference  is  that  we  want 
reality  beyond  everything  else.  We  do  not  demand  the 
truth  because  we  do  not  know  where  or  how  to  get  it. 
We  do  not  want  rationalism,  because  that  is  only  a 
philosophy,  and  it  has  limitations  like  any  other  philoso- 
phy. We  do  not  demand  what  is  natural  or  realistic  in 
the  philosophical  sense,  because  that  would  imply  a  selec- 
tion of  things,  in  operation  all  the  time,  before  the  things 
were  offered  to  us.  In  zoology  and  anthropology  we 
want  to  know  all  forms  which  really  exist,  but  we  have 
no  patience  with  invented  and  imaginary  forms.  In 
history  we  do  not  allow  documents  to  be  prepared  which 
will  serve  a  purpose;  to  us,  such  documents  would  have 
the  character  of  lies.  That  they  would  be  edifying  or 
patriotic  does  not  excuse  them.  Probably  modern  men 
have  no  harder  task  than  the  application  of  the  historic 
sense  to  cases  in  those  periods  of  history  when  it  was  not 
thought  wrong  to  manufacture  such  documents  as  one's 
cause  required. 

The  modern  study  of  nature  has  helped  to  produce  this 
way  of  looking  at  things,  and  the  way  of  looking  at  things 
has  made  science  possible.  I  want  to  have  the  notion  of 
science  built  on  this  thirst  for  reality,  and  respond  to  it 
at  every  point.  There  may  be  knowledge  of  reality  whose 
utility  we  do  not  know,  but  it  would  be  overbold  for  any 
one  to  say  that  any  knowledge  of  reality  is  useless. 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  ATTITUDE  OF  MIND        21 

Since  our  ancestors  devoted  so  much  attention  to 
phantasms  and  left  us  piles  of  big  books  about  them,  one 
great  department  of  science  must  be  criticism,  by  which 
we  discern  between  the  true  and  the  false.  There  is  one 
historical  case  of  this  requirement  which  always  rises 
before  my  mind  whenever  I  think  of  the  need  of  criticism 
—  that  is  witch-persecution.  Although  the  church  had 
a  heavy  load  of  blame  for  this  frightful  abuse,  yet  the 
jurists  were  more  to  blame.  As  to  the  church  also,  the 
Protestants,  especially  the  Puritans  of  Scotland,  were 
as  bad  as  the  Roman  Catholics.  Witch-persecution  is 
rooted  in  demonism,  which  is  the  oldest,  widest,  and  most 
fundamental  form  of  religion.  Whenever  religion  breaks 
down  there  is  always  produced  a  revival  of  demonism. 
The  developments  of  it  may  be  traced  from  early  Chal- 
daea.  It  was  believed  that  demons  and  women  fell  in 
love  and  begot  offspring.  Nightmare,  especially  in  the 
forms  experienced  on  mountains,  led  to  notions  of  mid- 
night rides,  and  Walpurgis-Nacht  assemblies;  then  the 
notion  of  obscene  rites  was  added.  It  was  believed  that 
witches  could  provoke  great  storms  and  convulsions  of 
nature;  all  remarkable  instances  of  calamity  or  good 
luck,  especially  if  it  affected  one  or  a  few,  were  ascribed 
to  them.  Especially  hail-storms  and  tornadoes,  which 
sometimes  destroy  crops  over  a  very  limited  area,  but 
spare  all  the  rest,  were  thought  to  be  their  work.  It 
was  believed  that  they  could  transfer  good  crops  from 
their  neighbors'  fields  to  their  own.  Here  we  see  how 
phantasms  grow.  The  bulls  of  popes  summed  up  and 
affirmed  the  whole  product  as  fact.  Then,  too,  all  the 
apparatus  of  pretended  investigation  and  trial  which  the 
Inquisition  had  developed  was  transferred  to  the  witch- 
trials.  As  women  chiefly  were  charged  with  witchcraft, 
the  result  was  that  all  this  accumulation  of  superstition. 


22        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

folly,  and  cruelty  was  turned  against  them.  K  we  try 
to  form  an  idea  of  the  amount  of  suffering  which  resulted, 
our  hearts  stand  still  with  horror. 

Now  there  are  some  strong  reasons  for  the  faith  in 
witchcraft.  Everybody  believed  that  witches  existed, 
that  they  could  enter  into  contracts  with  demons,  and 
could  get  supernatural  aid  to  carry  out  their  purposes 
in  this  world.  All  the  accused  witches  believed  this. 
It  was  held  to  be  wicked  to  make  use  of  witches  or  de- 
mons, but  it  was  believed  that  there  were  possible  ways 
of  accomplishing  human  purposes  by  employing  them. 
Consequently  when  men  or  women  wanted  wealth,  or 
office,  or  honor,  or  great  success,  or  wanted  to  inspire 
love,  or  to  gratify  hate,  envy,  and  vengeance,  or  wanted 
children,  or  wanted  to  prevent  other  people  from  having 
children,  this  way  was  always  supposed  to  be  open. 
No  doubt  very  many  of  them  tried  it,  at  least  in  homely 
and  silly  ways  —  when  put  to  the  torture  they  confessed 
it.  Then,  too,  somnambulism,  dreams,  and  nightmare 
took  forms  which  ran  on  the  lines  of  popular  superstition, 
and  many  a  woman  charged  with  witchcraft  did  not 
know  but  she  had  been  guilty  of  it  to  some  extent  and 
without  conscious  knowledge.  Again,  the  Scripture  argu- 
ment for  demonism  and  witchcraft  was  very  strong. 
It  was  this  pitfall  which  caught  the  Protestants;  how 
could  they  deny  that  there  are  any  witches  when  the 
Bible  says:  "Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live." 
Witches  were  persons  who  had  gone  over  to  the  side  of 
Satan  and  his  hosts  in  their  war  on  God;  they  were 
enemies  of  the  human  race.  The  deductions  from  the 
primary  fantastic  notion  of  demons  were  all  derived  on 
direct  and  indisputable  lines,  and  those  deductions  ruled 
the  thought  of  Christian  Europe  for  five  hundred  years* 

What  was  wanted  to  put  a  stop  to  the  folly  and  wicked- 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  ATTITUDE  OF  MIND        28 

ness  was  criticism.  The  case  shows  us  that  we  men, 
including  the  greatest  and  best  of  us,  may  fall  at  any  time 
under  the  dominion  of  such  a  mania,  unless  we  are  trained 
in  methods  of  critical  thinking.  A  series  of  great  sceptics 
from  Montaigne  to  Voltaire  met  the  witch  doctrines 
with  scorn  and  derision.  They  were  not  afraid  to  deny 
the  existence  of  demons.  It  appears  also  that  the  so- 
called  common-sense  of  the  crowd  revolted  at  the  absurd- 
ities of  witchcraft.  Every  person  who  was  executed  as 
a  witch  named,  imder  torture,  others,  who  were  then 
arrested,  tortured,  and  executed;  each  of  these  named 
others,  and  so  the  witch- judges  found  that  they  were 
driven  on,  by  judicial  execution  of  the  most  cruel  form,  to 
depopulate  a  whole  territory.  It  was  a  critical  revolt 
when  they  saw  this  construction  of  their  own  conduct 
and  turned  against  it.  When  we  read  the  story  we  are 
amazed  that  good  and  honest  men  could  have  gone  on 
for  centuries  inflicting  torture  of  the  extremest  kind  on  old 
women  without  the  bit  of  critical  reflection  which  should 
have  led  them  to  ask  themselves  what  they  were  doing. 

Let  us  not  make  the  mistake  of  supposing  that  all 
foUies  and  manias  of  this  kind  are  permanently  overcome 
and  need  not  be  feared  any  longer.  The  roots  of  popular 
error  are  ineradicable;  they  lie  at  the  bottom  of  human 
nature;  they  can  produce  new  growth  and  new  fruits  at 
any  time.  In  this  twentieth  century  the  probable  line  on 
which  the  deductions  will  be  drawn  is  in  politics  and  civil 
institutions.  The  modern  world  has  rejected  rehgious 
dogmatism,  but  it  has  taken  up  a  great  mass  of  poUtical 
dogmatism,  and  this  dogmatism  is  intertwined  with  the 
interests  of  groups  of  men.  If  you  accept  the  political 
dogmas  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  begin  to  build 
deductions  on  them  you  will  reach  a  construction  as  ab- 
surd and  false  as  that  of  witchcraft.     The  only  security 


24         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

is  the  constant  practise  of  critical  thinking.  We  ought 
never  to  accept  fantastic  notions  of  any  kind;  we  ought 
to  test  all  notions;  we  ought  to  pursue  all  propositions 
until  we  find  out  their  connection  with  reality.  That 
is  the  fashion  of  thinking  which  we  call  scientific  in  the 
deepest  and  broadest  sense  of  the  word.  It  is,  of  course, 
applicable  over  the  whole  field  of  human  interests,  and 
the  habit  of  mind  which  insists  on  finding  realities  is  the 
best  product  of  an  education  which  may  be  properly  called 
scientific.  I  have  no  doubt  that,  in  your  lifetime,  you 
will  see  questions  arise  out  of  popular  notions  and  faiths, 
which  will  call  for  critical  thinking  such  as  has  never  been 
required  before,  especially  as  to  social  relations,  political 
institutions,  and  economic  interests. 

Here  I  may  notice,  in  passing,  the  difference  between 
science  and  religion  in  regard  to  the  habits  of  thought 
which  each  encourages.  No  religion  ever  offers  itself 
except  as  a  complete  and  final  answer  to  the  problems  of 
life.  No  religion  ever  offers  itself  as  a  tentative  solution. 
A  religion  cannot  say:  I  am  the  best  solution  yet  found, 
but  I  may  be  superseded  tomorrow  by  new  discoveries. 
But  that  is  exactly  what  every  science  must  say.  ReH- 
gions  do  not  pretend  to  grow;  they  are  born  complete 
and  fully  correct  and  our  duty  in  regard  to  them  is  to 
learn  them  in  their  integrity.  Hence  Galton  says  that 
"the  religious  instructor,  in  every  creed,  is  one  who 
makes  it  his  profession  to  saturate  his  pupils  with 
prejudice."  ^ 

Every  science  contains  the  purpose  and  destiny  of 
growth  as  one  of  its  distinguishing  characteristics;  it 
must  always  be  open  to  re-examination  and  must  submit 
to  new  tests  if  such  are  proposed.  Consequently  the 
modes  and  habits  of  thought  developed  by  the  study  of 

^  Hereditary  Genius,  p.  210. 


THE   SCIENTIFIC  ATTITUDE  OF   MIND        25 

science  are  very  different  from  those  developed  by  the 
study  of  religion.  This  is  the  real  cause,  I  think,  of  the 
antagonism  between  science  and  religion  which  is  vaguely 
felt  in  modern  times,  although  the  interest  is  lacking 
which  would  bring  the  antagonism  into  an  open  conflict. 
I  cannot  believe  that  this  attitude  will  remain  constant. 
I  am  prepared  to  believe  that  some  of  you  may  live  to 
see  new  interest  infused  into  our  traditional  religion  which 
will  produce  an  open  conflict.^  At  present  scientific 
methods  are  largely  introduced  into  history,  archaeology, 
the  comparison  of  religions,  and  Biblical  interpretation, 
where  their  effect  is  far  more  destructive  than  the  mass  of 
people  yet  know.  When  the  antagonism  develops  into 
open  conflict,  parties  will  take  sides.  It  is  evident  that 
the  position  of  the  parties  on  all  the  great  faiths  and 
interests  of  men  will  differ  very  widely  and  that  each  posi- 
tion will  have  to  be  consistent  with  the  fundamental  way 
of  looking  at  the  facts  of  life  on  which  it  is  founded. 
It  does  not  seem  possible  that  a  scientist  and  a  sacra- 
mentarian  could  agree  about  anything. 

There  is  another  form  of  phantasm  which  is  still  in 
fashion  and  does  great  harm,  that  is,  faith  in  ideals. 
Men  who  rank  as  strong  thinkers  put  forward  ideals  as 
useful  things  in  thought  and  effort.  Every  ideal  is  a 
phantasm;  it  is  formed  by  giving  up  one's  hold  on  reaHty 
and  taking  a  flight  into  the  realm  of  fiction.  When  an 
ideal  has  been  formed  in  the  imagination  the  attempt  is 
made  to  spring  and  reach  it  as  a  mode  of  realizing  it. 
The  whole  process  seems  to  me  open  to  question;  it  is 
unreal  and  unscientific;  it  is  the  same  process  as  that  by 
which  Utopias  are  formed  in  regard  to  social  states,  and 
contains  the  same  fallacies;   it  is  not  a  legitimate  mental 

^  Thomas  Aquinas  said  that  "  science  is  sin  except  as  pursued  because  it 
leads  to  a  knowledge  of  God."     Summa  II,  i,  Qu.  167,  1. 


26        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

exercise.  There  is  never  any  correct  process  by  which 
we  can  reaHze  an  ideal.  The  fashion  of  forming  ideals 
corrupts  the  mind  and  injures  character.  What  we  need 
to  practise,  on  the  contrary,  is  to  know,  with  the  greatest 
exactitude,  what  is,  and  then  plan  to  deal  with  the  case 
as  it  is  by  the  most  approved  means. 

Let  me  add  a  word  about  the  ethical  views  which  go 
with  the  scientific-critical  way  of  looking  at  things.  I 
have  mentioned  already  our  modern  view  of  manufactured 
documents,  which  we  call  forged.  In  regard  to  history 
it  seems  to  me  right  to  say  that  history  has  value  just  on 
account  of  the  truth  which  it  contains  and  not  otherwise. 
Consequently  the  historian  who  leaves  things  out,  or 
puts  them  in,  for  edifying,  patriotic,  or  other  eflFect,  sins 
against  the  critical-scientific  method  and  temper  which 
I  have  described.  In  fact,  patriotism  is  another  root  of 
non-reality,  and  the  patriotic  bias  is  hostile  to  critical 
thinking. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  criticism  is  pessimistic.  I 
say  that  it  must  be  admitted,  because,  in  our  time,  op- 
timism is  regarded  as  having  higher  merit  and  as  a  duty; 
that  which  is  pessimistic  is  consequently  regarded  as 
bad  and  wrong.  That  is  certainly  an  error.  Pessimism 
includes  caution,  doubt,  prudence,  and  care;  optimism 
means  gush,  shouting,  boasting,  and  rashness.  The 
extreme  of  pessimism  is  that  fife  is  not  worth  living;  the 
extreme  of  optimism  is  that  everything  is  for  the  best  in 
the  best  of  worlds.  Neither  of  these  is  true,  but  one  is 
just  as  false  as  the  other.  The  critical  temper  will  cer- 
tainly lead  to  pessimism;  it  will  develop  the  great  element 
of  loss,  disaster,  and  bad  luck  which  inheres  in  all  human 
enterprises.  Hence  it  is  popularly  considered  to  consist 
in  fault-finding.  You  will  need  to  guard  against  an  excess 
of  it,  because  if  you  yield  to  it,  it  will  lame  your  energies 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  ATTITUDE  OF  MIND        27 

and  deprive  you  of  courage  and  hope.  Nevertheless  I 
cannot  doubt  that  the  popular  feeling  in  our  time  and 
country  needs  toning  down  from  a  noisy  and  heedless 
optimism.  Professor  Giddings,^  a  few  years  ago,  made 
a  very  interesting  analysis  and  classification  of  books 
pubhshed  in  this  country,  from  which  he  thought  that  he 
proved,  statistically,  that  the  temper  of  our  people  now 
is  between  ideo-emotional  and  dogmatic-emotional.  By 
ideo-emotional  he  means  inquiring  or  curious,  and  con- 
vivial; by  dogmatic-emotional  he  means  domineering 
and  austere.  We  must  notice,  as  limiting  this  test,  that 
the  book-market  can  bear  testimony  only  to  the  taste 
of  the  "reading  public,"  which  is  but  a  very  small  part  of 
the  population,  and  does  not  include  the  masses.  Pro- 
fessor Giddings  found  that  50  per  cent  of  the  books 
published  aimed  to  please  and  appealed  to  emotion  or 
sentiment;  40  per  cent  aimed  to  convert,  and  appealed 
to  belief,  ethical  emotion,  or  self-interest;  8  per  cent 
aimed  to  instruct,  were  critical,  and  appealed  to  reason. 
The  other  2  per  cent  contained  all  the  works  of  high 
technical  or  scientific  value,  lost  really  in  an  unclassifi- 
able  residuum.  This  means  that  our  literature  is  almost 
entirely  addressed  to  the  appetite  for  romance  and  ad- 
venture, probable  or  improbable,  to  sentimentalism,  to 
theoretical  interest  in  crime,  marital  infelicity,  and  per- 
sonal misfortune,  and  to  the  pleasure  of  light  emotional 
excitement,  while  a  large  part  of  it  turns  on  ethical  emo- 
tion and  ignorant  zeal  in  social  matters.  This  accords 
with  the  impression  one  gets  from  the  newspapers  as  to 
what  the  people  like.  The  predominance  of  the  emo- 
tional element  in  popular  literature  means  that  people 
are  trained  by  it  away  from  reality.  They  lose  the  power 
to  recognize  truth.    Their  power  to  make  independent 

1  Psychological  Review,  VIII,  337. 


28        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ethical  judgments  is  undermined,  and  all  value  is  taken 
out  of  their  collective  opinion  on  social  and  political 
topics.  They  are  made  day-dreamers,  or  philistines,  or 
ready  victims  of  suggestion,  to  be  operated  upon  by  re- 
ligious fakers,  or  politicians,  or  social  innovators.  What 
they  need  is  criticism,  with  all  the  pessimism  which  it 
may  bring  in  its  train.  Ethics  belong  to  the  folkways  of 
the  time  and  place;  they  can  be  kept  sound  and  vigorous 
only  by  the  constant  reaction  between  the  traditional 
rule  and  the  individual  judgment.  What  we  must  have, 
on  this  domain  also,  is  a  demand  for  reality  and  a  trained 
power  to  perceive  the  relation  between  all  human  interests 
and  the  facts  of  reality  at  the  time  existing. 

These  are  the  ideas  which  it  seemed  to  me  most  desirable 
to  suggest  to  you  at  this  moment  when  you  are  joining 
this  society.  I  hope  that  you  will  here,  by  your  work, 
your  influence  on  each  other,  and  all  the  exercises  of  the 
society,  develop  your  zeal  for  scientific  truth,  and  all  the 
virtues  of  mind  and  character  which  common  pursuit  of 
reality  may  be  expected  to  produce.  We  cannot  welcome 
you  to  grand  halls  and  old  endowments.  You  cannot 
carry  on  your  work  under  fine  paintings,  with  beautiful 
furniture,  or  a  rich  society  library.  I  will  say  frankly 
that  I  wish  you  could  do  so;  I  wish  that  we  had  all  the 
accumulations  of  time  and  money  which  such  conveniences 
would  present.  I  do  not  doubt,  however,  that  your 
youth  and  zeal  will  suflSce  for  you  and  we  expect  that  you 
will  make  up  for  all  deficiencies  by  your  earnest  work. 
It  should  be  the  spirit  with  which  you  enter  the  society 
to  make  your  connection  with  it  tell  on  your  education. 
You  have  been  selected  as  men  of  earnest  purpose  and 
industry.  You  can  do  much  for  each  other.  Common 
interest  in  the  same  line  of  work  will  draw  you  together. 
I  wish  you  all  prosperity  and  success. 


EARTH  HUNGER  OR  THE  PHH^OSOPHY 
OF  LAND  GRABBING 


EARTH  HUNGER   OR  THE  PHILOSOPHY 
OF  LAND   GRABBING 

[1896] 

The  most  important  limiting  condition  on  the  status 
of  human  societies  is  the  ratio  of  the  number  of  their 
members  to  the  amount  of  land  at  their  disposal.  It  is 
this  ratio  of  population  to  land  which  determines  what 
are  the  possibilities  of  human  development  or  the  limits 
of  what  man  can  attain  in  civilization  and  comfort. 

Unoccupied  land  has  been  regarded  by  at  least  one 
economist  as  a  demand  for  men,  using  "demand"  in  the 
technical  economic  sense.  I  should  not  like  to  be  under- 
stood as  accepting  that  view.  Wild  land  or  nature  cannot 
be  personified  as  wanting  labor  —  it  is  not  even  an  intel- 
ligible figure  of  speech.  Much  less  can  we  think  of  eco- 
nomic demand  as  predicable  of  land  or  nature.  Economic 
demand  is  a  phenomenon  of  a  market,  and  it  is  unreal 
unless  it  is  sustained  by  a  supply  offered  in  the  market  in 
exchange  for  the  thing  demanded.  If  it  is  really  nature 
that  we  have  in  mind,  then  the  globe  rolled  on  through 
space  for  centuries  on  centuries  without  a  laborer  upon  it. 
The  bare  expanse  of  its  surface  was  the  scene  of  growth, 
change,  and  destruction  in  endless  series,  and  nature  was 
perfectly  satisfied.  Nature  means  nothing  but  the  drama 
of  forces  in  action,  and  it  is  only  a  part  of  our  vain  anthro- 
pomorphism that  we  think  of  its  operation  as  "progres- 
sive" in  proportion  as  they  tend  towards  a  state  of  things 
which  will  suit  us  men  better  than  some  other  state.  It  is 
an  excessive  manifestation  of  the  same  sentiment  to  talk 


32         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  wild  land  as  a  demand  for  men.  The  desert  of  Sahara 
makes  no  demand  for  men;  but  nature  is  fully  as  well 
satisfied  to  make  a  Sahara,  where  such  is  the  product  of 
her  operations,  as  to  make  the  wheat  fields  of  Iowa  or 
Dakota.  Even  in  Iowa  and  Dakota,  nature  offers  men 
no  wages  for  labor.  There  are  the  land,  the  sunshine, 
and  the  rain.  If  the  men  know  how  to  use  those  elements 
to  get  wheat  there,  and  if  they  will  work  hard  enough  for 
it,  they  can  get  it  and  enjoy  it;  if  not,  they  can  lie  down 
and  die  there  on  the  fertile  prairie,  as  many  a  man  did 
before  the  industrial  organization  had  expanded  widely 
enough  to  embrace  those  districts.  Nature  went  on  her 
way  without  a  throb  of  emotion  or  a  deviation  by  a  hair's 
breadth  from  the  sequence  of  her  processes. 

It  is  by  no  means  in  the  sense  of  any  such  rhetorical 
flourish  or  aberration  that  I  say  that  the  widest  and  most 
controlling  condition  of  our  status  on  earth  is  the  ratio  of 
our  numbers  to  the  land  at  our  disposal.  This  ratio  is 
changing  all  the  time  on  account  of  changes  which  come 
about  either  in  the  numbers  of  the  men  or  in  the  amount 
of  the  land.  The  amount  of  the  land,  again,  is  not  a 
simple  arithmetical  quantity.  As  we  make  improvements 
in  the  arts  a  single  acre  is  multiplied  by  a  new  factor  and 
is  able  to  support  more  people.  All  the  improvements  in 
the  arts,  of  whatever  kind  they  are,  have  this  effect,  and 
it  is  by  means  of  it  that,  other  things  remaining  the  same, 
they  open  wider  chances  for  the  successive  generations  of 
mankind  to  attain  to  comfort  and  well-being  on  earth. 
All  our  sciences  tell  on  the  same  ratio  in  the  same  way. 
Their  effect  is  that  by  widening  our  knowledge  of  the 
earth  on  which  we  live,  they  increase  our  power  to  inter- 
pose in  the  play  of  the  forces  of  nature  and  to  modify  it 
to  suit  our  purposes  and  preferences.  All  the  develop- 
ments of  our  social  organization  have  the  same  effect. 


EARTH  HUNGER  S3 

We  are  led  by  scientific  knowledge,  or  driven  by  instinct, 
to  combine  our  eflPorts  by  co-operation  so  that  we  can 
make  them  more  efficient,  —  and  "more  efficient"  means 
getting  more  subsistence  out  of  an  acre,  so  that  we  can 
support  more  people,  or  support  the  same  number  on  a 
higher  grade  of  comfort.  This  alternative  must  be  borne 
in  mind  throughout  the  entire  discussion  of  our  subject. 
When  we  have  won  a  certain  power  of  production,  we  can 
distribute  it  in  one  of  two  ways:  we  can  support  a  greater 
number  or  we  can  support  the  same  number  better;  or 
we  can  divide  it  between  the  two  ways,  employing  a  part 
in  each  way. 

Here  comes  in  what  we  call  the  "standard  of  hving." 
A  population  of  high  intelligence,  great  social  ambition, 
and  social  seK-respect  or  vanity  wHl  use  increased  eco- 
nomic power  to  increase  the  average  grade  of  comfort, 
not  to  increase  the  numbers.  The  standard  of  living  is  a 
grand  social  phenomenon,  but  the  phrase  has  been  greatly 
abused  by  glib  orators  and  philosophers.  The  standard 
of  living  does  not  mean  simply  that  we  all  vote,  that  we 
are  fine  fellows  and  deserve  grand  houses,  fine  clothes, 
and  good  food,  simply  as  a  tribute  to  our  nobility.  The 
men  who  start  out  with  the  notion  that  the  world  owes 
them  a  living  generally  find  that  the  world  pays  its  debt 
in  the  penitentiary  or  the  poorhouse.  Neither  is  the 
standard  of  living  an  engine  which  economists  and  re- 
formers can  seize  upon  and  employ  for  their  purposes. 
The  standard  of  living  is  a  kind  of  industrial  honor.  It 
costs  a  great  deal  to  produce  it  and  perhaps  still  more  to 
maintain  it.  It  is  the  fine  flower  of  a  high  and  pure 
civilization  and  is  itself  a  product  or  result,  not  an  instru- 
mentality. If  by  careful  education  and  refined  living  a 
man  has  really  acquired  a  high  sense  of  honor,  you  can 
appeal  to  it,  it  is  true,  and  by  its  response  it  furnishes 


34        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

a  most  effective  security  for  wide-reaching  principles  of 
action  and  modes  of  behavior;  but  the  more  anyone 
appreciates  honor  in  character,  the  less  he  likes  to  invoke 
it  loudly  or  frequently.  It  is  too  delicate  to  be  in  use 
every  day.  It  is  too  modest  to  be  talked  about  much. 
If  a  man  brags  of  his  honor  you  know  that  he  has  not 
got  much,  or  that  it  is  not  of  the  right  kind. 

It  is  so  with  the  standard  of  living.  The  social  philoso- 
pher who  realizes  what  it  is,  knows  that  he  must  not  use  it 
up.  It  is  not  to  be  employed  as  a  means  for  economic 
results.  On  the  contrary,  to  cultivate  a  high  standard  of 
living  is  the  highest  end  for  which  economic  means  can  be 
employed.  For  a  high  standard  of  living  costs,  and  it 
costs  what  it  is  hardest  for  men  to  pay,  that  is,  self-denial. 
It  is  not  a  high  standard  of  living  for  a  man  to  be  so  proud 
that  he  will  not  let  his  children  go  barefoot,  incurring 
debts  for  shoes  which  he  never  intends  to  pay  for;  the 
question  is  whether  he  will  go  without  tobacco  himself 
in  order  to  buy  them.  The  standard  of  hving  is,  there- 
fore, an  ethical  product;  and  a  study  of  the  way  in  which 
it  is  produced  out  of  social  and  economic  conditions  is 
useful  to  sweep  away  a  vast  amount  of  easy  and  empty 
rhetoric  about  the  relations  of  ethical  and  economic 
phenomena,  by  which  we  are  pestered  in  these  days.  The 
standard  of  living  reacts  on  the  social  organism  in  the  most 
effective  manner,  not  by  any  mystical  or  transcendental 
operation,  but  in  a  positive  way  and  as  a  scientific  fact. 
It  touches  the  relation  of  marriage  and  the  family  and 
through  them  modifies  the  numbers  of  the  population; 
that  is,  it  acts  upon  that  side  of  the  population-to-land 
ratio  which  we  are  considering. 

Let  us  not  fail  to  note,  in  passing,  how  economic,  ethical, 
and  social  forces  act  and  react  upon  each  other.  It  is 
only  for  academical  purposes  that  we  try  to  separate 


EARTH  HUNGER  86 

them;  in  reality  they  are  inextricably  interwoven.  The 
economic  system  and  the  family  system  are  in  the  closest 
relation  to  each  other  and  there  is  a  give  and  take 
between  them  at  every  point.  What  we  call  **  ethical 
principles"  and  try  to  elevate  into  predominating  rules 
for  family  and  economic  life  are  themselves  only  vague 
and  inconclusive  generalizations  to  which  we  have  been 
led,  often  unconsciously,  by  superficial  and  incompetent 
reflection  on  the  experiences  which  family  and  economic 
life,  acting  far  above  and  beyond  our  criticism  or  control, 
have  suggested  to  us. 

So  far  we  have  seen  that  all  the  discoveries  and  inven- 
tions by  which  we  find  out  the  forces  of  Nature  and  sub- 
jugate them  to  our  use,  in  effect  increase  the  supporting 
power  of  the  land,  and  that  the  standard  of  living,  by 
intelligently  ordering  the  way  in  which  we  use  oiu*  added 
power,  prevents  the  dispersion  of  it  in  the  mere  main- 
tenance of  a  greater  number. 

It  must  further  be  noticed  that  all  our  ignorances,  follies, 
and  mistakes  lessen  the  supporting  power  of  the  land. 
They  do  not  prevent  numbers  from  being  born,  but  they 
lessen  the  fund  on  which  those  who  are  born  must  live,  or 
they  prevent  us  from  winning  and  enjoying  what  the 
means  at  oiu"  disposal  are  really  able  to  produce.  All 
discord,  quarreling,  and  war  in  a  society  have  this  effect. 
It  is  legitimate  to  think  of  Nature  as  a  hard  mistress  against 
whom  we  are  maintaining  the  struggle  for  existence.  All 
our  science  and  art  are  victories  over  her,  but  when  we 
quarrel  amongst  ourselves  we  lose  the  fruits  of  our  victory 
just  as  certainly  as  we  should  if  she  were  a  human  oppo- 
nent. All  plunder  and  robbery  squander  the  fund  which 
has  been  produced  by  society  for  the  support  of  society. 
It  makes  no  difference  whether  the  plunder  and  rob- 
bery are  legal  or  illegal  in  form.     Every  violation  of 


36         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

security  of  property  and  of  such  rights  as  are  recognized 
in  society  has  the  same  effect.  All  mistakes  in  legisla- 
tion, whether  sincere  and  innocent  or  dictated  by  selfish 
ambition  and  sordid  greed,  have  the  same  effect.  They 
rob  the  people  of  goods  that  were  fairly  theirs  upon  the 
stage  of  civilization  on  which  they  stood.  All  abuses  of 
political  power,  all  perversion  of  institutions,  all  party 
combinations  for  anti-social  ends  have  the  same  effect. 
All  false  philosophies  and  mistaken  doctrines,  although 
it  may  take  a  long  time  to  find  out  which  ones  are  false, 
still  have  the  same  effect.  They  make  us  cast  away  bread 
and  seize  a  stone. 

All  the  old  institutions  which  have  outlived  their  use- 
fulness and  become  a  cover  for  abuses  and  an  excuse  for 
error,  so  that  the  wars  and  revolutions  which  overthrow 
them  are  a  comparative  good,  must  also  be  regarded  as 
clogs  which  fetter  us  in  our  attempts  to  grasp  what  our 
knowledge  and  labor  have  brought  within  our  reach.  In 
short,  all  these  evils  and  errors  bring  upon  us  penalties 
which  consist  in  this :  that  while  with  the  amount  of  land 
at  our  disposal,  its  productiveness  being  what  it  is,  and 
the  power  of  our  arts  being  what  it  is,  and  our  numbers 
being  what  they  are,  we  might  reach  a  certain  standard 
of  well-being,  yet  we  have  fallen  short  of  it  by  just  so 
much  as  the  effect  of  our  ignorances,  follies,  and  errors 
may  be.  We  can  express  the  effect  of  our  mis-doing  and 
mis-thinking  by  regarding  it  as  so  much  subtracted  from 
the  resources  and  apparatus  with  which  we  are  carrying 
on  the  struggle  for  existence.  We  make  the  mistakes,  in 
large  part,  because  we  cannot  convince  ourselves  what  is 
error  and  what  is  truth.  The  element  of  loss  and  penalty 
which  I  have  described  is  the  true  premium  which  is 
offered  us  for  finding  out  where  the  truth  lies.  The 
greatest  good  we  can  expect  from  our  scientific  investi- 


EARTH  HUNGER  87 

gations  and  from  our  education  is  to  free  us  from  these 
errors  and  to  save  us  from  these  blunders.  In  this  view, 
it  is  certain  that  a  correct  apprehension  of  social  facts 
and  laws  would  advance  the  happiness  of  mankind  far 
more  than  any  discovery  of  truth  about  the  order  of 
physical  nature  which  we  could  possibly  make. 

From  one  point  of  view,  history  may  be  regarded  as 
showing  the  fluctuations  in  the  ratio  of  the  population  to 
the  land.  The  population  of  Greece  underwent  a  very 
great  reduction,  during  the  three  centuries  before  the 
Christian  era,  from  the  numbers  which  lived  in  great 
prosperity  in  the  heroic  period  of  the  fifth  century  before 
Christ.  The  reasons  for  this  have  never  been  very  satis- 
factorily ascertained,  but  it  may  have  been  through  the 
laziness  and  general  worthlessness  of  the  population.  The 
population  of  the  Italian  peninsula  decreased  at  a  high 
ratio  during  the  period  of  the  Roman  empire,  and  great 
areas  of  land  went  out  of  cultivation.  The  Roman  sys- 
tem, after  stimulating  the  whole  Roman  world  to  high 
prosperity  by  giving  peace  and  security,  next  used  up  and 
exhausted  the  whole  world,  including  Italy.  In  western 
Europe,  the  cultivated  area  and  the  population  increased 
and  decreased  together  during  the  whole  feudal  period, 
according  as  anarchy  and  violence  or  peace  and  security 
prevailed  for  periods  and  over  areas.  We  may  regard 
the  maintenance  of  a  great  number  in  high  comfort  on 
a  given  area  as  the  standard  towards  which  success  in 
solving  economic  and  social  problems  is  carrying  us,  or 
from  which  we  are  falling  away  when  we  fail  to  solve  the 
problems  of  the  time  correctly.  Taking  wide  sweeps  of 
history,  it  is  possible  to  see  the  "tides  in  the  affairs  of 
men"  which  are  marked  by  these  ebbs  and  flows  of  the 
population  against  the  areas  of  waste  land. 

It  was  the  existence  of  waste  land  in  the  coimtries  of 


38        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

western  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages  that  was  all  the 
time  influencing  the  fate  of  the  servile  classes.  The  waste 
had  high  importance  in  the  manor  system;  but  as  slow 
improvements  were  brought  about  in  agriculture,  the 
importance  of  the  waste  declined.  The  lord  desired  to 
increase  his  income  by  reducing  it  to  tillage,  and  for 
this  purpose  he  created  tenures  upon  it  on  behalf  of 
young  men  of  the  servile  class,  the  terms  of  which  were 
easier  than  those  of  the  ancient  and  traditional  tenures; 
or  he  allowed  tenants  to  create  petty  holdings  out  of  the 
waste  on  special  terms  which  gave  them  a  chance  to  win 
capital.  However  slight  the  claims  were  which  the  ser- 
vile classes  had  upon  the  waste  by  law  and  custom,  never- 
theless the  mass  of  wild  land  existing  in  and  through  the 
country  was  in  fact  a  patrimony  of  theirs;  its  economic 
effect  upon  their  status  and  future  was  a  thing  which  no 
laws  or  customs  could  cut  off.  The  wars,  famines,  and 
pestilences  which  decimated  their  ranks  were  a  blessing  to 
those  who  survived  and  who  found  themselves  possessed  of 
a  monopoly  of  labor  over  against  a  superabundance  of 
land.  That  is  the  economic  status  which  gives  the  laborer 
control  of  the  market  and  command  of  the  situation. 

It  was  this  state  of  things  which  freed  the  servile  classes 
of  France,  England,  and  northern  Italy.  An  advance  in 
the  arts  by  several  great  inventions  greatly  assisted  the 
movement.  The  rise  of  the  dynastic  states,  establishing 
civil  institutions  with  greater  security,  peace,  and  order, 
worked  in  the  same  direction.  The  Church  had  been 
preaching  doctrines  for  a  dozen  centuries  which  were 
distinctly  unfavorable  to  servitude,  and  which  did  avail 
to  produce  conscientious  misgivings  and  erratic  acts 
hostile  to  servitude.  The  influence  of  these  teachings  is 
not  to  be  denied,  but  it  was  trifling  compared  with  the 
great  economic  changes  which  have  been  mentioned,  in 


EARTH  HUNGER  89 

bringing  about  the  emancipation  of  the  servile  classes. 
Here  we  have  the  reason  for  the  earth  hunger  of  the  mass 
of  mankind.  It  is  that  the  condition  of  things  which 
favors  the  masses,  always  assuming  that  the  guarantees 
of  peace  and  order  allow  of  industrial  development,  is  one 
in  which  the  area  of  land  is  large  in  proportion  to  the 
population.  The  servile  classes  contributed  little  to  their 
own  emancipation  except  a  dull  and  instinctive  pushing 
or  shirking  by  which  they  were  enabled  to  win  whatever 
amelioration  of  their  status  the  changes  in  motion  might 
bring  to  them.  Often  their  prejudices,  ignorance,  and 
stupidity  led  them  to  oppose  their  own  interest  and  wel- 
fare. It  was  the  educated  and  middle  classes  which,  by 
thought  and  teaching,  wrought  out  all  the  better  knowl- 
edge and,  so  far  as  human  wit  had  anything  to  do  with 
it,  —  which  indeed  was  not  to  any  great  extent  —  broke 
the  way  for  a  new  order  of  things;  and  these  classes,  too, 
acted  in  general  selfishly  or  short-sightedly. 

In  any  true  philosophy  of  the  great  social  changes, 
especially  the  emancipation  of  the  servile  classes  at  the 
end  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  the  leading  nations  of  western 
Europe,  we  must  look  upon  the  new  power  of  production 
of  the  means  of  subsistence  from  the  soil,  in  proportion 
to  the  numbers  who  were  to  share  it,  as  the  true  expla- 
nation of  those  changes.  The  living  men  had  won  new 
power,  new  command  over  the  conditions  of  life.  They 
might  abuse  or  waste  that  power,  but  when  they  had  it, 
their  greater  welfare  could  be  no  great  mystery.  The 
expansion  of  life  in  every  social  domain  did  upset  ideas 
and  philosophies.  It  produced  a  religious  and  ecclesi- 
astical revolution  and  entailed  upon  the  civilized  world 
religious  wars  which  produced  a  vast  squandering  of  the 
new  power  —  for  all  history  teaches  us  that  it  is  idle  to 
hope  that  added  power  will  be  employed  simply  to  go 


40        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

forward  to  simple  and  direct  blessing  of  mankind.  On 
the  contrary,  men  are  sure  to  go  to  fighting  over  it  in 
one  relation  or  another.  The  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  were  full  of  wars  which  are  interpreted  in  one 
way  or  another  according  to  their  immediate  aspects,  but 
which  really  were  struggles  of  men,  families,  classes,  and 
parties  for  the  possession,  control,  and  advantage  of  the 
new  economic  power.  It  is,  however,  a  great  and  instruct- 
ive fact  to  notice  that,  although  the  labor  class  knew 
least  about  the  case,  had  least  share  in  it,  and  were  least 
considered  by  the  active  parties  in  it,  they  won  the  most 
by  it.  Everybody  was  working  for  them,  not  out  of 
love  for  them,  or  out  of  intention,  but  because  it  was  not 
possible  to  help  it. 

Here  we  must  be  on  our  guard  against  a  fallacy  which 
is  almost  universal  in  connection  with  this  matter.  It  is 
constantly  denied,  especially  by  reformers  and  revolu- 
tionists, that  the  labor  class  has  won  anything  by  the 
developments  of  modern  civilization.  It  appears  that 
the  basis  for  this  assertion  is  the  fact  that  there  were 
peasant,  labor,  and  pauper  classes  centuries  ago  and  that 
there  are  such  still.  A  moment's  reflection  shows  that 
this  is  no  proof.  It  would  be  necessary  to  show  that  these 
classes  are  now  the  descendants  of  persons  who  formed 
the  same  classes  in  former  centuries.  Such  is  not  the  case. 
The  merchants  and  bankers  of  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries  were  of  humble  origin.  As  they  came 
out  of  the  towns  of  that  period,  there  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that,  if  their  ancestry  were  traceable,  we  should 
find  that  they  had  sprung,  two  or  three  centuries  earlier, 
from  servile  or  menial  origin.  After  enriching  themselves, 
they  bought  land  and  "founded  families."  They  formed 
alliances,  as  soon  as  possible,  with  offshoots  of  the  feudal 
nobility.     The  modern  nobility  of  England  and  France 


EARTH  HUNGER  41 

has  never  been  feudal.  It  is  really  a  class  of  enriched 
citizens  who  have  retired  and  become  landholders,  so  that 
their  power  is  in  wealth.  They  have,  therefore,  with  few 
exceptions,  come  up  from  the  lower,  and  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases  from  the  lowest,  classes,  as  would  be 
seen  if  the  ancestral  stream  were  followed  far  enough 
back.  Having  once  passed  the  barrier,  they  are  counted 
and  count  themselves  amongst  the  nobles;  and  since 
the  noble  class,  as  a  class,  has  continued,  the  move- 
ment of  emancipation,  enfranchisement,  and  enrich- 
ment, which  has  been  acting  on  the  labor  class  through 
its  most  efficient  families,  is  lost  sight  of.  There  has 
been  a  counter-movement  which  is  also  almost  univer- 
sally unknown  or  ignored  —  that  of  impoverished  fami- 
lies and  persons  of  the  nobility  down  into  the  ranks  of 
trade  and  labor. 

In  the  enumeration  of  the  great  forces  of  class  change 
which  operated  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries, 
I  have  reserved  one  for  more  special  attention.  The 
adventurous  voyagers  who  began  to  explore  the  outlying 
parts  of  the  earth  in  the  fifteenth  century  thought  little 
and  cared  less  about  the  peasants  and  artisans  at  home; 
but  it  was  they  more  than  any  others  who  were  fighting 
for  the  fortunes  of  those  classes  in  the  future.  The  very 
greatest,  but,  so  far  as  I  have  seen,  least  noticed  signifi- 
cance of  the  discovery  of  America  was  the  winning  of  a 
new  continent  for  the  labor  class.  This  effect  was  not 
distinctly  visible  until  the  nineteenth  century,  because 
this  new  patrimony  of  the  labor  class  was  not  available 
until  the  arts  of  transportation  were  improved  up  to 
the  requisite  point  at  which  the  movement  of  men  and 
products  could  be  easily  accomplished.  Then,  as  we  have 
seen  in  our  time,  the  movement  of  men  one  way  and  food 
the  other  developed  to  great  proportions.     Is  it  not  true. 


42        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

then,  that  this  is  the  great  signijBcance  of  the  discovery  of 
America,  and  that  we  have  as  yet  barely  come  to  the  point 
where  we  can  see  its  significance?  It  is  only  later  that 
the  colonization  of  Australia  has  become  important,  and 
it  is  only  at  this  moment  that  the  colonization  of  Africa 
is  beginning  to  intensify  the  same  effect.  What  is  that 
effect?  It  is  that  when  the  pressure  of  population  on 
land  in  western  Europe  was  becoming  great,  the  later 
improvements  in  the  arts  —  above  all  the  use  of  steam 
and  the  opening  of  the  outlying  continents  —  have,  in 
two  ways  at  the  same  time,  relieved  that  pressure.  This 
combination  has  produced  an  industrial  revolution,  which 
is  bringing  in  its  train  revolutions  in  philosophy,  ethics, 
religion,  politics,  and  all  other  relations  of  human  society; 
for  whenever  you  touch  economic  and  industrial  causes, 
you  touch  those  which  underlie  all  the  others  and  whose 
consequences  will  inevitably  ramify  through  all  the  others. 
The  philosophers  and  all  the  resolution-makers  of  every 
grade  come  running  together  and  shouting  pseans  of 
victory  to  the  rising  power  and  the  coming  glory;  and, 
therefore,  they  claim  that  they  have  made  it  all.  It  is 
totally  false.  They  are  themselves  but  the  product  of 
the  forces,  and  all  their  philosophies  and  resolutions  are 
as  idle  as  the  waving  of  banners  on  the  breezes.  Democ- 
racy itself,  the  pet  superstition  of  the  age,  is  only  a  phase 
of  the  all-compelling  movement.  If  you  have  abundance 
of  land  and  few  men  to  share  it,  the  men  will  all  be  equal. 
Each  landholder  will  be  his  own  tenant  and  his  own 
laborer.  Social  classes  disappear.  Wages  are  high.  The 
mass  of  men,  apart  from  laziness,  folly,  and  vice,  are  well 
off.  No  philosophy  of  politics  or  ethics  makes  them 
prosperous.  Their  prosperity  makes  their  political  phi- 
losophy and  all  their  other  creeds.  It  also  makes  all  their 
vices,  and  imposes  on  them  a  set  of  fallacies  produced 


EARTH  HUNGER  43 

out  of  itself.  It  is  only  necessary  to  look  about  us  in 
the  world  of  to-day  to  see  how  true  this  all  is. 

We  may  be  very  sure  that  the  wheat  from  America  has 
had  far  more  effect  on  ideas  in  Europe  than  the  ideas  from 
America,  and  that  the  Old  World  aristocracies  need  care 
little  for  American  notions  if  only  American  competition 
would  not  lower  the  rent  of  land.  For  the  outlying  conti- 
nents affect  not  only  those  who  go  to  them  but  also  the 
whole  labor  class  who  stay  at  home.  Even  while  they 
stay  there  the  pressure  of  the  whole  reachable  land-supply 
weighs  upon  the  labor  market  and  the  land  market  at 
home;  and  it  makes  wages  high,  food  cheap,  and  the  rent 
of  land  low,  all  at  once.  That  is  what  exalts  the  laborer 
and  abases  the  landed  aristocrat,  working  both  ways  in 
behalf  of  democracy  and  equality.  To  it  we  can  trace  the 
wild  passion  for  equality  and  all  the  leveling  philosophy 
of  the  age.  This  is  what  makes  that  passion  and  that 
philosophy  so  irresistible,  whether  for  the  weal  or  the  woe 
of  the  human  race.  For  each  man  to  have  a  wide  area 
at  his  disposal,  whether  actually  or  only  by  economic 
effect  spreading  through  the  industrial  organization, 
means  that  he  has  the  conditions  of  existence  within  his 
control,  that  he  is  not  ground  down  by  poverty,  that  he 
is  forced  to  seek  no  man's  protection,  that  he  is  cowed  by 
no  fear,  that  he  is  independent  and  "free,"  that  he  can 
provide  for  his  family  without  care  and  can  accumulate 
capital  too.  K  you  ask  him  the  reasons  for  all  this,  he 
will  probably  begin  to  talk  about  institutions  and  doc- 
trines; but  if  you  will  study  the  case,  you  will  find  that 
the  same  forces  made  him  and  the  institutions  too;  and  his 
faith  in  the  institutions  is  like  that  of  a  savage  who  thinks 
that  he  would  not  have  had  success  in  hunting  but  for 
the  fetish  around  his  neck. 

We  may  now  see  the  real  philosophy  of  colonization. 


44        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

It  is  not  simply  because  an  old  habitat  becomes  too 
crowded,  although  it  is  true  that  there  is  a  kind  of  inertia, 
consisting  of  habit,  love  of  home,  fear  of  the  unknown, 
differences  of  language,  and  so  on,  which  keeps  population 
settled  until  stress  is  felt.  There  is  a  great  economic 
advantage  in  spreading  such  population  as  there  is  over 
all  the  land  there  is,  although  they  cover  it  but  thinly. 
This  economic  advantage  is  accompanied  by  a  great  social 
disadvantage.  In  a  scattered  population  the  social  organ- 
ization is  low  and  the  social  activities  are  weak.  Such 
institutions  as  churches,  schools,  libraries,  and  museums, 
which  flourish  only  in  great  centers  of  population,  are 
feeble  or  non-existent.  The  spread  of  population  over  a 
great  area  of  land,  however,  puts  the  first  absolute  neces- 
sities of  existence  within  easy  reach  of  those  who  have 
nothing  but  muscular  strength  at  their  disposal.  The 
internal  movement  of  population  in  the  United  States  has 
illustrated  all  this  most  obviously.  The  social  inertia 
which  has  been  mentioned  is  less  effective  in  our  old  states 
to  keep  people  from  going  to  the  new  states  than  it  is 
in  Europe  to  prevent  emigration  to  the  new  countries. 
Hence  we  find  that  Iowa  has  been  largely  settled  by  emi- 
grants from  Illinois,  and  Montana  is  now  being  settled 
by  emigrants  from  Iowa.  This  is  the  phenomenon  of 
earth  hunger,  the  apparently  insatiable  desire  to  get  more 
land;  and  the  reason  for  it  lies  in  the  facts  which  have 
been  mentioned.  With  more  land,  there  are  higher 
wages,  because  no  one  will  work  for  wages  which  are 
convertible  into  less  goods  than  the  laborer  could  get  out 
of  the  land  when  used  in  the  most  lavish  and  wasteful 
manner.  With  more  land,  the  manual  unskilled  laborer 
is  raised  in  comparison  with  the  skilled  and  educated 
laborer,  that  is,  the  masses  are  raised  in  comparison  with 
the  classes.     When  there  is  plenty  of  land,  the  penalties 


EARTH  HUNGER  45 

of  all  social  follies,  vices,  and  ignorance  are  light.  Each 
man  has  plenty  of  the  "rights  of  man"  because  he  need 
only  be,  in  order  to  be  a  valuable  member  of  society;  he 
does  not  need  high  training  and  education,  as  he  would 
in  an  old  and  crowded  society  with  a  strict  organization, 
high  discipline,  intense  competition,  and  weighty  sanctions 
upon  success  or  failure. 

These  facts  of  the  social  order  are  of  the  most  funda- 
mental and  far-reaching  importance.  They  are  the  facts 
which  control  the  fate  of  the  human  race  and  produce  the 
great  phenomena  which  mark  ages  of  history.  They  are 
the  facts  which,  since  the  great  geographical  explorations 
of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  have  spread  the 
population  of  the  European  nations  over  the  globe.  The 
most  enterprising  nations  seized  the  advantage  first  and 
have  pushed  it  farthest.  The  movements  of  p>opulation 
have  been  accelerated  by  all  the  inventions  which  have 
facilitated  transportation  and  communication. 

The  only  peoples  who  are  affected  by  this  redistribution 
of  population  are  those  who  are  enlightened  enough  to 
feel  the  forces  which  are  bringing  it  about.  In  spreading 
over  the  globe,  they  have  come  in  contact  with  the  old 
populations  which  already  occupied  the  outlying  regions 
and  who  were  on  lower  stages  of  civilization.  The  earth 
hunger  of  the  civilized  men  has  produced  a  collision  of 
the  civilized  and  the  uncivilized,  in  which  the  latter  have 
often  perished.  Up  to  the  present  time,  only  one  of  the 
outlying  nations  —  Japan  —  has  appeared  able,  as  a 
nation,  to  fall  into  its  place  in  the  new  order  of  things  and 
to  march  on  with  it.  The  inevitable  doom  of  those  who 
cannot  or  will  not  come  into  the  new  world  system  is  that 
they  must  perish.  Philanthropy  may  delay  their  fate,  and 
it  certainly  can  prevent  any  wanton  and  cruel  hasten- 
ing of  it;  but  it  cannot  avert  it  because  it  is  brought 


46        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

on  by  forces  which  carry  us  all  along  like  dust  upon  a 
whirlwind. 

Here  we  have  reached  a  point  at  which  an  important 
distinction  must  be  made.  So  far  I  have  spoken  of  those 
phenomena  of  earth  hunger  which  are  economic  and 
social.  Men  want  more  land  without  assignable  limit, 
because  in  that  way  they  get  a  good  living  more  easily 
and  improve  their  class  position.  Let  us  call  this  economic 
earth  hunger  to  distinguish  it  from  political  earth  hunger, 
which  will  now  demand  our  attention;  for  no  sooner  have 
men  begun  to  spread  over  the  earth  and  colonize  it  than 
the  question  of  political  jurisdiction  over  the  new  countries 
must  arise.  Is  this  jurisdiction  a  care  and  a  burden;  or 
is  it  an  enjoyable  good  and  a  means  of  glory?  This  ques- 
tion has  not  yet  been  answered.  I  hope  to  throw  some 
light  on  it.  Hitherto  great  colonies  and  dependencies 
and  vast  possessions  in  outlying  territories  have  been 
regarded  as  producing  national  greatness  and  minister- 
ing to  national  glory;  and  to  this  day  the  civilized  nations 
are  acting  as  if  it  were  the  simplest  common  sense  to  seize 
more  territory  if  at  any  time  it  was  possible.  By  political 
earth  hunger,  therefore,  I  mean  the  appetite  of  states  for 
territorial  extension  as  a  gratification  of  national  vanity. 

The  distinction  between  economic  earth  hunger  and 
political  earth  hunger  is  to  be  very  carefully  noted.  If 
there  is  good  wheat  land  in  Manitoba,  the  people  of 
Minnesota  and  Iowa  will  want  to  go  there  and  get  the 
use  of  it.  It  is  not  because  they  have  not  enough  where 
they  are  —  there  is  no  such  conception  as  enough  when 
more  can  be  had.  It  is  because  they  find  an  economic 
advantage  in  spreading  over  more.  If  they  did  not,  they 
would  not  go.  This  is  economic  earth  hunger.  There  is, 
however,  in  Manitoba,  a  civilized  government  with  law, 
rights,  and  police;   such  being  the  case,. there  is  no  need 


EARTH  HUNGER  47 

that  those  who  emigrate  thither  should  assume  the  civil 
jurisdiction.  In  the  case  of  Texas,  on  the  other  hand, 
in  the  early  days  of  its  settlement  there  was  such  need; 
the  pohtical  extension  was  needed  to  support  the  economic 
extension,  because  Mexico  was  not  furnishing  the  guaran- 
tees of  peace  and  order.  Everything  in  connection  with 
that  matter  was  construed  by  its  bearings  on  slavery; 
and  that  meant,  on  the  distribution  of  political  power  in 
our  own  body  poHtic.  The  people  of  New  England  then 
denounced  the  economic  earth  hunger  as  well  as  the 
political  earth  hunger.  In  a  calmer  view  of  the  retro- 
spect, both  appear  justifiable  in  that  case.  The  later 
aggression  on  Mexico  and  the  appropriation  of  her  terri- 
tory was  another  matter.  Still  again,  when,  in  our 
recent  war  flurry,  it  was  proposed  to  conquer  Canada,  it 
was  a  case  of  genuine  political  earth  hunger,  which  had 
no  justification  in  anything,  but  was  a  project  of  pure 
outrage,  cruelty,  and  aggression. 

There  are  two  very  different  modes  of  exploiting  the 
outlying  regions  of  the  globe,  which  need  to  be  distin- 
guished one  from  the  other.  Civilized  men  may  go  out 
to  spend  a  few  years  winning  such  wealth  as  they  can, 
with  the  intention  of  returning  and  enjoying  it  at  home; 
or  they  may  go  to  establish  new  homes,  expecting  that 
their  descendants  will  reside  in  the  new  countries.  The 
latter  class  alone  are  colonists,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the 
term.  The  English  have  far  surpassed  all  other  nations 
in  the  extent  to  which  they  have  been  true  colonists,  and 
that  is  the  reason  why  they  have  held  a  more  secure  foot- 
hold in  a  greater  number  of  places  than  any  other  Euro- 
pean nation.  We  must  count  our  own  country  into  their 
achievements  in  this  respect.  The  same  energy  and  enter- 
prise which  made  them  open  this  country  to  settlement 
has  made  them  open  others,  the  jurisdiction  of  which 


48        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

they  still  retain.  "Land  grabbing"  is  only  a  more  col- 
loquial expression  for  earth  hunger;  but  it  must  be 
admitted  that  to  grab  land  for  the  purpose  of  settling 
and  colonizing  is  to  perform  a  far  greater  service  to 
our  race  than  to  grab  it  for  the  sake  of  exploiting  its 
riches  and  then  leaving  it  in  order  to  spend  the  product 
in  European  luxury. 

Rodbertus,  the  German  socialist,  interpreted  the  last 
three  hundred  years  of  exploration  and  colonization  as 
an  exploitation  and  consumption  of  the  outlying  parts 
of  the  globe  by  the  old  centers  of  civilization.  In  this 
observation  he  gave  proof  of  a  more  philosophical  view  of 
the  phenomena  than  anyone  else  had  taken.  Let  us  see 
how  far  it  was  true.  We  have  already  had  occasion  to 
notice  that  the  Roman  empire  was  a  grand  system  of 
exhaustion  and  consumption  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
by  the  Roman  city.  It  was  the  study  of  this  fact  which 
led  Rodbertus  to  the  observation  which  has  been  quoted; 
he  regarded  the  modern  movements  of  world-commerce 
and  colonization  as  having  the  same  character.  If  the 
people  of  the  civilized  nations  of  Europe  go  out  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth  only  to  exploit  them  in  the  way  which  I  have 
described,  and  if,  in  that  process,  they  exterminate  the 
aborigines,  then  the  view  which  Rodbertus  suggests  has 
a  great  deal  of  truth  in  it.  If  the  European  nations  carve 
up  the  globe  into  sections  which  they  appropriate  and 
govern  with  a  view  to  their  own  interests  only,  maintain- 
ing the  political  jurisdiction  for  that  purpose  only,  and 
fighting  with  each  other  for  the  plunder,  then  his  view 
is  the  right  one;  and  the  whole  extension  of  commerce 
and  colonization  for  three  hundred  years  past  has  been 
a  system  of  extortion,  oppression,  and  greed.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  system  of  commerce  and  colonization  has 
consisted  in  planting  and  building  up  commonwealths  in 


EARTH  HUNGER  49 

America,  Australia,  and  South  Africa,  to  become  inde- 
pendent centers  of  civilization,  self-governing  communi- 
ties, developing  their  own  powers  for  their  own  interests 
and  entering  into  the  world's  commerce,  by  which  all  the 
people  of  the  globe  share  all  the  resources  of  the  globe, 
then  the  observation  of  Rodbertus  is  a  calumny  and  not 
the  truth. 

As  a  fact  of  history,  we  know  that  the  former  of  these 
systems  of  relation  between  Europe  and  the  outlying  con- 
tinents did  prevail  until  the  present  century.  It  is  not 
extinct  yet.  Spain  to  a  considerable  degree  and  France 
to  a  less  degree  still  cling  to  the  notion  of  dependent 
colonies  as  things  worth  having  for  what  the  mother 
country,  in  antagonism  to  their  own  interest  and  certainly 
in  antagonism  to  that  of  any  other  European  nation,  can 
get  out  of  them.  Germany  has  only  entered  upon  colonial 
enterprise  within  this  generation,  and  she  seems  to  be 
disposed  to  develop  her  colonial  policy  quite  upon  the  old 
lines.  The  policy  of  England  in  this  entire  matter  is  so 
much  more  enlightened  than  that  of  any  other  nation 
that  it  stands  upon  a  separate  plane  and  conforms  to  the 
second  of  the  two  systems  which  I  have  described  above 
as  completely  as  if  Canada,  Australia,  and  South  Africa 
were  actually  independent  commonwealths  like  the 
United  States.  In  regard  to  all  these  outlying  states, 
the  European  hegemony  of  the  globe  is  entirely  broken, 
and  they  constitute,  with  the  leading  European  states, 
a  great  family  of  equal  commonwealths  which,  taken  in 
its  entirety,  constitutes  civilized  society.  In  this  aspect 
earth  hunger  appears  less  sordid  than  in  the  days  of  the 
colonial  system.  It  is  only  a  name  for  the  process  by 
which  the  human  race  occupies  its  patrimony,  and  by 
which  civilization  overcomes  barbarism  throughout  the 
earth.     He  who  supposes,  however,  that  this  process  can 


50        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

go  on  smoothly  and  peacefully  must  be  little  versed  in 
history  or  in  human  nature. 

Two  systems  of  relation  between  the  old  centers  of 
population  and  the  outlying  continents  have  been  dis- 
tinguished: one  of  which  was  created  by  the  European 
states  as  soon  as  the  outlying  continents  were  opened; 
the  other  of  which  was  introduced  by  the  revolt  of  these 
North  American  colonies  in  1775  and  has  been  further 
built  up  by  the  English  colonies  and  the  United  States 
since.  The  former  system  was  the  "colonial  system." 
According  to  that,  Europe  was  the  head  of  the  globe,  in 
relation  to  which  all  the  outlying  parts  were  placed  as 
subordinate  members.  The  statesmen  and  diplomats  of 
Europe  around  their  council  tables  quarreled  and  strove 
with  each  other  and  allotted  amongst  themselves  the 
divisions  which  they  made.  The  colonists  participated 
in  these  strifes.  Our  colonists,  as  we  well  know,  had  a 
"policy"  as  long  as  the  French  owned  Canada,  the 
Spaniards  Florida,  and  the  Dutch  New  York.  War  was 
always  welcome  in  Europe  because  it  gave  a  chance  to 
seize  another  country's  outlying  possessions;  war  was 
always  welcome  here  because  it  gave  the  colonists  a 
chance  to  try  to  drive  the  French  off  the  continent.  Our 
historians  accept  this  policy  as  sound  and  approve  of  it; 
but  what  did  the  colonists  gain  by  driving  the  French  out 
of  Canada,  or  what  harm  would  it  have  done,  politically 
speaking,  if  they  had  stayed  there  until  this  day?  Eco- 
nomically Canada  would  not  probably  have  been  as  rapidly 
or  wisely  developed  as  it  has  been.  In  the  Revolutionary 
War,  that  habit  of  looking  at  things  which  had  become 
traditional  in  the  colonies  made  it  seem  a  matter  of  the 
first  necessity  to  conquer  Canada  or  to  force  her  to  join 
the  revolt,  although  she  chose  not  to  do  so.  The  only 
effects  of  the  fact  that  she  has  been  outside  which  are  dis- 


EARTH  HUNGER  51 

cernible,  are  that  we  have  been  free  from  some  race  and 
religious  discords  which  would  have  tormented  us  if  she 
had  been  in,  and  that  we  have  not  been  allowed  to  have 
free  trade  with  her  as  we  should  have  had  if  she  had  been 
in.  Our  congressional  and  newspaper  statesmen  agree 
that  this  latter  has  been  a  great  gain  to  us,  or  that  free 
trade  with  Canada  would  have  been  a  great  harm;  but 
within  a  few  months  they  have  manifested  an  eager  dis- 
position to  conquer  Canada,  as  if  free  trade  with  her  would 
be  a  great  blessing,  provided  that  we  could  get  at  it  through 
a  war  of  conquest  and  could  impose  it  by  compulsion,  and 
provided  also  that  we  could,  by  absorbing  her,  get  the 
race  war  and  the  religious  war  added  to  our  political 
burdens  at'  the  same  time.  These  are  the  paradoxes  and 
follies  of  earth  hunger  on  its  political  side.  On  the  south 
we  quarreled  with  Spain  as  long  as  she  held  Florida  and 
Louisiana;  then  we  quarreled  with  Mexico  until  we  had 
taken  Texas  and  California.  We  have  inherited  our  full 
share  of  the  appetite  which  I  have  called  political  earth 
hunger.  Internal  troubles  and  the  time  required  to  digest 
the  last  meal  have  allayed  it  for  a  period,  but  it  will 
awaken  again. 

Earth  hunger  is  the  wildest  craving  of  modem  nations. 
They  will  shed  their  life  blood  to  appease  it.  It  gratifies 
national  vanity  and  economic  expansion  both  at  once. 
No  reasoning  can  arrest  it  and  no  arguments  satisfy  it. 
At  the  present  moment  the  states  of  Europe  are  carving 
up  Africa  as  they  carved  up  America  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  They  set  about  the  process  ten  years  ago  with 
most  commendable  deliberation,  and  with  an  attempt  to 
establish  rules  of  order  for  the  process;  but  they  are 
already  snarling  and  growling  at  each  other  over  the  pro- 
cess, like  hungry  tigers  over  their  prey.  Germany  and 
Italy,  the  two  latest  colonizers  and  the  two  whose  domestic 


52        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

burdens  and  conditions  fit  them  least  for  colonial  enter- 
prise, are  the  most  eager  and  rapacious  of  all.^  The 
notion  is  that  colonies  are  glory.  The  truth  is  that 
colonies  are  burdens  —  unless  they  are  plundered,  and 
then  they  are  enemies.  Russia  is  spreading  her  control 
over  central  Asia,  although  the  internal  cohesion  of  her 
empire  is  so  weak  that  it  will  probably  break  in  pieces 
under  any  great  strain.  France,  after  enormous  losses 
in  Tonkin,  has  just  conquered  Madagascar  and  joined 
England  in  carving  up  Siam. 

The  confusion  between  the  economic  use  and  the 
political  jurisdiction  is  one  of  the  strongest  and  most 
mischievous  with  which  we  have  to  deal.  The  best 
thing  which  could  happen,  from  our  point  of  view,  is  that 
England  should  "grab"  all  the  land  on  the  globe  which 
is  not  owned  by  some  first-class  power.  She  would  govern 
it  all  well,  on  the  most  enlightened  and  liberal  principles, 
and  we  could  all  go  to  it  for  pleasure  or  gain  as  our  inter- 
ests might  dictate.  She  would  then  have  all  the  trouble, 
care,  and  responsibility,  and  we  should  all  share  the  ad- 
vantages. If  there  is  a  gold  mine  in  Guiana  and  if  Eng- 
land gets  the  political  jurisdiction  of  it,  the  English  nation 
or  exchequer  will  not  get  a  grain  of  gold  from  the  mine; 
if  Englishmen  get  some  of  it,  they  can  only  do  so  by  going 
to  the  mine  and  digging  as  individuals.  Individuals  of 
any  other  nationality  can  go  there  and  do  the  same;  if 
any  Americans  want  to  go  there,  they  will  undoubtedly 
have  better  chances  if  the  civil  jurisdiction  of  the  district 
is  English  than  if  it  is  Venezuelan. 

^  In  the  few  days  since  this  paper  was  written,  Italy  has  suffered  a  defeat 
in  her  colonial  extension,  which  not  only  proves  that  she  is  forcing  it  as  pure 
aggression  against  a  local  power  competent  to  maintain  a  state,  but  also  puts 
her  face  to  face  with  a  fatal  alternative:  she  must  either  abandon  her  colonial 
enterprise,  or  she  must  prosecute  it  by  new  sacrifices  which  will  bring  her  to 
bankruptcy,  and  perhaps  to  anarchy. 


EARTH  HUNGER  53 

So  we  see  that,  although  the  grossest  errors  and  abuses 
of  the  old  colonial  system  have  been  abandoned,  the  point 
of  view  and  the  philosophy  of  that  system  are  by  no  means 
abandoned.  Earth  hunger  in  its  political  aspect  is  as  strong 
as  ever.  The  political  philosophy  of  the  colonial  system — 
against  which  the  Americans  revolted  in  1775  —  is  as 
fully  accepted  in  our  Congress  now  as  it  was  in  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament  in  1775.  The  doctrines  of  that  system 
were  all  repeated  in  the  debate  on  the  proposition  to  annex 
Hawaii  two  years  ago,  and  the  debates  of  this  winter  have 
been  full  of  them.  The  one  argument  which  threatened 
for  a  time  to  carry  the  annexation  of  Hawaii  was  that 
if  we  did  not  take  it,  England  would.  That  was  an  eight- 
eenth century  argument,  and  its  strength  showed  how 
little  advance  we  have  made  in  having  our  own  doctrines. 
The  English  statesmen  declared  that  they  would  not 
take  it  if  they  could  possibly  help  it  and  that  they  wished 
that  we  would  take  it  and  govern  it.  That  was  a  nine- 
teenth century  argument. 

Now  let  us  not  exaggerate,  especially  by  ignoring  what 
is  sound  and  true  in  the  old  doctrines.  Our  own  contests 
with  Spain  in  Florida  and  Louisiana  were  unavoidable; 
she  was  not  competent  to  govern  her  dependencies  in  a 
way  to  make  them  safe  neighbors;  she  did  not  fulfil  her 
duties  in  international  law  and  comity.  In  Louisiana 
she  held  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  River  and  tried  to 
use  her  position  to  make  the  river  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
Spanish  waters.  Such  pretensions  were  inadmissible. 
They  rested  on  obsolete  doctrines.  She  did  not  accept 
or  fulfil  the  duties  which  would  have  devolved  upon  her 
in  consistency  with  her  own  doctrines.  Her  claims  were 
based  on  abstract  rights  which  she  alleged  and  which,  if 
they  had  been  admitted,  would  have  been  purely  dogmatic. 
They  did  not  rest  on  facts,  or  relations,  or  an  adjustment 


54        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  mutual  interests;  and  they  were  not  maintained  with 
due  responsibility  such  as  must  always  go  with  a  claim  of 
right.  The  case  was  one,  therefore,  in  which  a  civilized 
state  of  inferior  rank  could  not  maintain  its  hold  on  terri- 
tory against  a  civilized  state  of  higher  rank.  It  was  only 
another  phase  of  the  case  presented  by  uncivilized  tribes 
which  try  to  hold  territory  against  civilized  colonists. 
There  is,  therefore,  some  truth  to  be  admitted  in  the 
doctrine  of  "manifest  destiny,"  although  the  doctrine 
is,  like  most  doctrines  in  politics,  a  glib  and  convenient 
means  of  giving  an  appearance  of  rationality  to  an  exer- 
cise of  superior  force.  The  truth  in  the  doctrine  is  that 
an  incompetent  holder  will  not  be  able,  as  a  matter  of 
fact  and  in  the  long  run,  to  maintain  possession  of  territory 
when  another  nation  which  will  develop  it  according  to 
its  capacity  is  ready  to  take  it.  A  contemporary  instance 
is  furnished  by  the  Transvaal,  where  the  Boers  certainly 
cannot  maintain  their  independence  and  authority  unless 
they  prove  themselves  competent  to  maintain  such  civil 
institutions  as  are  adequate  to  fiu-ther  the  development 
of  the  territory. 

Furthermore,  civilized  nations  may  find  themselves 
face  to  face  with  the  necessity  of  assuming  the  jurisdiction 
over  territory  occupied  by  uncivilized  people,  in  order  to 
police  it  and  give  local  peace,  order,  and  security,  so  that 
industry  and  commerce  may  be  prosecuted  there.  The 
European  nations  now  have  this  necessity  in  Africa.  The 
fact  remains,  however,  that  the  use  of  the  land  for  pro- 
duction and  the  political  jurisdiction  of  the  territory  are 
two  entirely  different  things.  What  men  want  is  to  get 
at  the  land  so  as  to  till  it  and  otherwise  use  it  for  industrial 
purposes;  the  political  jurisdiction  is  a  burden  which  is 
just  so  much  of  a  drawback  from  the  gain  of  using  the 
land.     If  the  industrial  use  could  be  got  without  taking 


EARTH  HUNGER  5S 

the  political  jurisdiction,  it  would  be  far  better.  In  other 
words,  if  the  natives  of  any  territory  could  maintain  the 
customs  and  institutions  which  are  necessary  in  order 
that  peaceful  industry  and  commerce  may  go  on,  that  is 
a  state  of  things  which  is  far  more  desirable  than  that 
there  should  be  any  supersession  of  the  native  authority 
by  any  civilized  state.  The  latter  step  is  an  irksome 
and  harmful  necessity  for  the  state  which  makes  it. 

As  illustrations  of  the  principles  here  suggested,  we  may 
notice  the  following  cases.  There  can  be  no  need  for  any 
civilized  state  to  assume  the  government  of  Japan,  while 
it  is  very  possible  that  there  may  soon  be  need  for  super- 
seding the  native  government  of  China.  There  is  need 
for  superseding  the  native  government  of  Turkey,  and 
nothing  prevents  it  but  the  jealousy  of  the  Christian 
governments  towards  each  other.  There  was  need  a  few 
years  ago  for  superseding  the  native  government  of 
Egypt;  the  country  was  in  anarchy  and  its  position  on 
the  road  to  India  made  that  unendurable.  It  has  been, 
is,  and  will  be  necessary  for  states  to  extend  their  politi- 
cal jurisdiction  over  outlying  territory,  whether  they  do 
it  willingly  or  unwillingly.  Nothing  that  has  been  said 
about  the  political  aspect  of  earth  hunger  should  be 
understood  as  denying  or  ignoring  that;  but  this  necessity 
is  presented  as  an  unwelcome  burden  and  not  in  the  least 
as  a  glorious  achievement  of  prosperity  and  profit. 

The  most  striking  instance  of  all  is  that  of  Cuba  as  our 
statesmen  are  now  forcing  it  upon  us.  It  is  possible  that 
the  island  may  fall  into  anarchy  and  that  it  might  become 
necessary  for  us  to  take  it  under  our  control;  but  measures 
are  now  proposed  which  would  set  in  train  a  movement 
for  U3  to  take  it  as  an  appropriation  of  a  property  sup- 
posed to  be  valuable;  that  is,  as  a  satisfaction  of  greed, 
not  as  submission  to  an  unwelcome  duty.     If  we  should 


56        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

so  take  it,  we  should  find  ourselves  face  to  face  with  an 
alternative:  either  to  hold  it  as  a  dependency  or  to  take 
it  into  our  Union  and  let  it  help  to  govern  us.  One  branch 
of  the  dilemma  is  as  appalling  as  the  other.  The  fathers 
of  this  republic  created  a  peculiar  form  of  confederated 
state  formed  of  democratic  republics.  They  meant  to 
secure  us  a  chance  to  live  in  peace,  happiness,  and  pros- 
perity, free  from  the  social  burdens  which  had  cursed  the 
civilized  nations  of  the  Old  World.  We  were  to  be  free 
from  war,  feudalism,  state  church,  balance  of  power, 
heavy  taxation,  and  what  Benjamin  Franklin  called  the 
"pest  of  glory."  We  were  to  have  none  of  the  traditions 
which  made  a  nation's  "greatness"  depend  on  the  pomp 
and  ceremony  of  courts  and  the  luxury  of  great  officers. 
We  were  to  have  no  grand  diplomacy  and  no  "high 
politics,"  as  the  French  and  Germans  call  it.  High 
politics  are  those  great  questions  of  national  policy  which 
are  reserved  for  royal  persons  and  great  dignitaries  of 
church  and  state  to  decide.  They  might  also  be  called 
so  because  they  "come  high "  to  the  common  people.  But 
if  we  are  to  have  what  the  fathers  of  the  republic  planned 
for  us,  we  must  submit  to  the  limitations  which  are  inevi- 
table in  the  plan;  and  one  of  them  is  that  we  can  never 
have  an  imperial  policy  and  can  hold  no  subject  depen- 
dencies. There  is  no  place  for  them  in  the  system,  and 
the  attempt  to  hold  and  administer  them  would  produce 
corruption  which  would  react  on  our  system  and  destroy 
it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  old  Federalists  were  right 
when  they  insisted  that  we  could  not  carry  on  our  con- 
federacy unless  the  members  of  it  were  approximately 
on  a  level  of  political  and  industrial  development.  We 
are  suffering  at  present  from  a  proof  of  it  in  the  position 
and  power  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  states,  which  are 
certainly  as  foreign  to  democracy  as  anything  can  possibly 


EARTH  HUNGER  57 

be.  To  admit  Senators  from  Cuba,  whether  they  were 
natives  or  carpet-bag  Americans,  would  be  to  prove  that 
we  had  lost  that  political  sense  which  has  always  charac- 
terized our  people  and  which  is  our  chief  pohtical  reliance. 

These  instances  go  to  show  that  the  question  of  terri- 
torial extension  is  a  question  of  expediency,  and  that  it 
depends  upon  the  occasion  and  upon  the  circumstances 
of  the  nation  itself  whether  it  is  wise  to  extend  territorial 
jurisdiction  and  responsibihties  or  not.  In  any  case, 
those  states  only  are  prepared  for  colonization  and  foreign 
responsibilities  whose  internal  cohesion  is  intense;  for 
every  extension  of  territory  brings  with  it  a  strain  upon 
the  internal  organism.  If  we  had  never  taken  Texas  and 
northern  Mexico,  we  never  should  have  had  any  secession. 

Let  us  now  turn  our  attention  back  to  the  historical 
development  for  a  few  moments,  in  order  to  notice  the 
effects  of  the  independence  from  Europe  which  was  won 
first  by  these  North  American  colonies  and  afterwards  by 
those  of  Spain. 

In  the  disruption  of  the  colonial  system  the  position  of 
the  former  Spanish  colonies  of  South  and  Central  America 
has  been  peculiar;  they  passed  out  of  the  domination  of 
Spain,  yet  they  have  never  won  good  standing  as  indepen- 
dent states  in  the  family  of  nations.  In  the  early  twenties 
of  this  century,  their  status  became  an  object  of  interest 
to  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States,  and  the  relation 
of  the  United  States  to  them  became  a  subject  of  political 
contention  here.  The  Panama  Congress  was  an  attempt 
to  organize  the  states  of  the  western  continent  under  the 
hegemony  of  the  United  States  for  the  purpose  of  declar- 
ing the  independence  of  the  western  continent  of  European 
control.  It  was  really  a  revolt  against  the  old  colonial 
system  such  as  has  been  above  described,  and  it  might 
properly  be  regarded  as  the  sequel  to  the  revolt  of  the 


58        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

thirteen  North  American  colonies  and  a  completion  of  the 
revolution  which  that  revolt  began  in  the  relations  be- 
tween Europe  and  the  outlying  continents.  The  Panama 
Congress  was,  therefore,  an  act  of  political  policy  and,  in 
that  light,  far  more  important  than  two  vague  dogmatic 
utterances  in  Monroe's  message  which  attempted  to  for- 
mulate the  view  of  those  relations  which  the  independent 
states  of  the  New  World  had  adopted  in  place  of  the  old 
notion  of  Europe  as  the  head  and  governor  of  the  civilized 
nations  of  the  whole  globe. 

If  the  Panama  Congress  had  been  carried  out  to  a  con- 
clusive result,  its  effects  might  have  been  important.  It 
became  a  matter  of  contest  between  parties  here  in  one 
of  the  bitterest  party  fights  in  our  political  history  — 
that  between  the  Adams  administration  and  the  Jack- 
son opposition.  The  confused  and  imperfect  results  left 
material  for  endless  wrangling  about  interpretations  of 
the  Monroe  doctrine.  These  interpretations  are  a  mine 
of  rhetorical  wealth  to  the  political  dogmatizer.  He  can 
get  out  of  it  any  great  principle  that  he  wants;  and  when 
a  political  dogmatizer  gets  a  great  principle,  he  is  equipped 
for  any  logical  necessity  which  he  may  encounter.  He 
builds  deduction  on  deduction,  and  if  he  finds  that  his 
foundation  is  after  all  too  narrow  for  the  needs  of  his 
argument,  he  can  always  go  back  to  it  and  develop  the 
fundamental  principle,  as  he  calls  it,  or  tack  on  a  logical 
deduction  which  he  says  was  implicit  in  it.  The  history 
of  theological  doctrine  and  of  all  social  and  political 
principle-spinning  shows  what  a  facile  and  futile  process 
this  is.  History  contains  instances  enough  to  show  us  the 
frightful  burden  which  a  doctrine  may  be.  It  comes  with 
the  prestige  of  tradition,  antiquity,  and  perhaps  a  great 
name,  to  take  away  from  the  living  generation  the  right 
to  do  their  own  thinking  and  to  compel  them  to  sacrifice 


EARTH  HUNGER  59 

their  lives  and  happiness  against  their  will  and  without 
the  consent  of  their  own  reason  and  conscience. 

In  his  message  of  December  17,  1895,  President  Cleve- 
land referred  to  the  balance-of -power  doctrine  as  a  parallel 
of  the  Monroe  doctrine.  The  example  was  unfortunate 
if  the  parallel  had  been  true.  What  oceans  of  blood  and 
mountains  of  treasure  have  been  spent  for  the  balance-of- 
power  doctrine!  And  what  result  is  there  to  show  for  it 
all.^^  We  have  had  in  our  history  many  doctrines :  America 
for  the  English;  no  taxation  without  representation;  state 
rights;  separation  of  purse  and  sword;  manifest  destiny; 
the  self -expanding  power  of  the  Constitution;  God's  pur- 
pose to  civilize  the  earth  by  African  slavery;  and  I  know 
not  how  many  others.  Some  of  them  are  obsolete  or 
forgotten.  Others  it  has  cost  us  frightful  sacrifices  to  set 
aside.  Inasmuch  as  a  United  States  Senator  has  referred 
to  the  doctrine  of  Washington's  "Farewell  Address,"  that 
we  should  avoid  entangling  alliances  with  foreign  nations, 
as  the  "Washington  fetish,"  I  may  perhaps  be  allowed 
to  call  the  Monroe  doctrine  the  "Monroe  fetish."  We 
should  do  best  to  declare  our  emancipation  from  all  doc- 
trines, to  do  our  own  thinking  on  all  our  own  questions, 
and  to  act  according  to  our  own  reason  and  conscience, 
not  according  to  anybody's  traditional  formula.  There 
is  all  the  more  reason  for  this  because  you  will  observe 
that  the  men  who  are  trying  to  force  us  to  do  what  they 
advocate,  by  shouting  "Monroe"  at  us,  all  drop  the 
Monroe  doctrine  as  soon  as  their  use  of  it  is  proved  false 
in  history  and  by  the  record  —  but  they  do  not  drop  the 
plans  they  propose  on  that  account.  If,  then,  they  do  not 
abide  by  Monroe,  but  only  use  his  name  as  a  club  with 
which  to  stun  us,  let  us  repudiate  Monroe  at  the  out- 
set, so  that  we  may  stand  on  an  even  footing.  If  I  were 
an  educated  young  man  now  growing  up,  I  would  not 


60        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

allow  anybody  to  entail  any  formula  on  me  that  would 
fetter  my  judgment  of  questions  and  cases  which  may 
arise. 

There  is,  however,  a  parallel  to  the  Monroe  doctrine 
which  is  far  closer  both  in  history  and  philosophy  than  the 
balance-of-power  doctrine,  and  that  is  the  colonial  policy 
as  it  has  been  described  in  this  paper.  It  has  been  shown 
how,  historically  and  in  obedience  to  the  strongest  forces 
which  work  upon  the  social  and  industrial  organization, 
the  opening-up  of  the  outlying  continents  produced  great 
movements  of  commerce  and  great  redistributions  of 
population.  The  colonial  policy  of  the  governments  was 
an  application  of  statecraft  and  diplomacy  to  the  situation. 
The  earth  was  drenched  in  blood  through  the  eighteenth 
century  in  obedience  to  that  policy.  It  has  also  been 
shown  how  the  Monroe  doctrine  and  the  Panama  Congress 
were  parts  of  a  grand  movement  which  marked  the  definite 
end  of  the  colonial  policy  as  to  America.  So  far,  good; 
but  now  out  of  the  end  of  that  period  springs  up  a  source 
of  new  woe.  The  Monroe  doctrine  as  often  interpreted 
really  amounts  to  a  new  doctrine  that  the  globe  is  to  be 
divided  into  two  independent  halves,  the  eastern  and  the 
western.  This  doctrine  is  to  take  the  place  of  the  doctrine 
that  the  globe  is  a  unit  ruled  from  and  by  Europe. 

Is  the  new  doctrine  any  better  than  the  old  one?  Is  it 
any  more  tenable.''  Is  it  not  certain  to  take  the  place  of 
the  old  one  as  the  fetish  for  which  our  children  must  spend 
their  blood  and  their  property  as  our  fathers  did  for  the 
old  colonial  system.'*  Is  it  anything  but  an  affectation,  a 
pose  which  cannot  be  maintained  except  for  a  time  and 
for  a  purpose,  to  say  that  we  will  control  this  continent 
and  refrain  from  meddling  in  the  other.'*  Does  the  United 
States  intend  to  abstain  from  forming  relations  of  all  kinds 
with  the  nations  of  the  eastern  continents  as  her  interests 


EARTH  HUNGER  61 

and  affairs  may  dictate?  Have  we  not  within  a  year  been 
forced  to  protect  our  citizens  in  China  and  Armenia,  and 
were  we  able  to  hold  aloof  from  the  war  between  China 
and  Japan?  Does  the  United  States  intend  to  deny  that 
the  states  of  South  America  are  independent  states  open 
to  access  by  any  other  nations  and  liable  to  have  any  kind 
of  friendly  or  unfriendly  relations  with  European  states 
such  as  any  two  independent  states  may  have  with  each 
other?  Does  the  United  States  hold  aloof  from  the 
present  development  of  Africa,  assuming  that  Americans 
will  never  engage  in  commerce  there  or  never  have  inter- 
ests there;  or  does  the  United  States  assume  that,  when 
civilized  powers  are  in  control,  it  will  be  possible  for  every- 
one to  carry  on  trade  and  industry  there  with  peace  and 
security?  It  is  evident  that  if  the  answers  to  these  ques- 
tions are  given  which  a  great  many  people  in  this  country 
have  recently  seemed  disposed  to  give,  the  new  doctrine 
of  dual  division  of  the  globe  is  to  take  the  place  of  the 
colonial  doctrine  of  European  headship  of  the  world,  as 
the  cause  of  strife,  bloodshed,  and  waste  to  the  whole 
human  race. 

We  are  already  living  under  a  regime  created  by  manipu- 
lation of  import  duties,  by  which  prices  for  all  the  great 
manufactured  products  are  raised  here  from  twenty-five  to 
fifty  per  cent  above  the  prices  in  other  civiHzed  countries. 
The  ground  alleged  for  this  poHcy  is  that  wages  are  high 
here.  Undoubtedly  they  are  higher  here  than  in  western 
Europe,  at  least  for  unskilled  laborers;  this  situation  is 
accounted  for  by  the  facts  about  the  land-supply  which  I 
discussed  in  the  beginning  of  this  essay.  It  is  now  pro- 
posed to  restrict  immigration  into  this  country,  and  the 
favorite  reason  alleged  is  to  close  our  labor  market  and 
make  wages  high.  Then  there  is  another  proposition 
earnestly  advocated;  that  is,  to  cut  this  continent  off  from 


62        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

the  rest  of  the  world  and  to  give  it  a  monetary  system  of 
its  own.  I  say  nothing  now  of  the  absurdity  and  impos- 
sibility of  these  propositions,  in  which  respect  no  one  of 
them  is  worse  than  either  of  the  others,  when  examined 
by  a  student  of  political  economy  —  they  have  a  certain 
coherence  and  consistency  in  their  error,  although  they 
are  mutually  destructive  of  each  other.  What  I  now 
desire  to  do  is,  by  putting  these  things  together  and  con- 
necting them  with  the  doctrine  of  political  isolation  of  the 
western  continent,  to  show  the  fallacy  and  absurdity,  as 
well  as  the  extravagance,  of  this  whole  set  of  notions.  Try 
to  imagine  this  western  continent  politically  separated 
from  intercourse  with  the  rest  of  mankind;  with  commerce 
interdicted  by  taxes  in  order  to  produce  industrial  inde- 
pendence; with  immigration  forbidden  in  order  to  make 
and  maintain  a  rate  of  wages  here  having  no  relation  to 
the  rate  of  wages  elsewhere;  and  with  an  independent 
monetary  system  planned  to  make  prices  here  indepen- 
dent of  those  in  the  rest  of  the  world.  You  will  see  how 
preposterous  such  a  program  is,  and  what  a  satire  it  is 
on  our  boasted  intelligence  that  we  are  forced  to  give 
it  serious  attention. 

There  is  another  view  of  the  political  organization  of 
the  globe  which  we  had  supposed  to  be  already  well  on 
towards  realization.  It  has  been  mentioned  above.  It 
is  the  view  of  the  states  of  the  globe  as  forming  a  great 
family  of  nations,  united  by  a  growing  body  of  inter- 
national law,  creating  institutions  as  they  are  needed  to 
regulate  international  relations,  bound  together  in  com- 
munity of  interest  by  free  commerce,  communicating  to 
one  another  the  triumphs  won  by  each  in  science  and  art, 
sharing  their  thoughts  by  a  common  literature  in  which 
the  barriers  of  language  are  made  as  little  effectual  as 
possible,  and  thus  creating  one  society  of  the  enlightened 


EARTH  HUNGER  6S 

nations  independent  of  state  boundaries.  Such  an  idea 
need  only  be  expressed  to  show  that  it  is  the  only  con- 
ception of  the  relation  of  nations  to  each  other  which  fits 
the  enlightenment  of  our  day.  It  is  not  in  the  least  an 
ideal  or  a  dream.  It  is  only  a  construction  of  facts  such 
as  our  international  law  already  recognizes  and  rests  upon. 
It  does  not  preclude  war  between  these  nations,  for  noth- 
ing can  preclude  war;  but  it  reduces  the  chances  of  it  by 
extending  the  sway  of  reason  and  introducing  into  inter- 
national relations  ideas  and  institutions  with  which  all 
enlightened  nations  are  already  familiar.  Such  a  con- 
ception of  international  relations  does  not  quench  earth 
hunger.  Nothing  can  quench  that;  for,  as  we  have  seen, 
it  is  the  impulse  which  drives  the  human  race  to  enter 
upon  and  enjoy  its  patrimony,  the  earth;  but  such  a  con- 
ception of  the  civilized  races  of  the  world  in  their  relation 
to  each  other  would  bring  into  a  clear  light  the  difference 
between  the  extension  of  industry  and  commerce  on  the 
one  side  and  political  aggrandizement  on  the  other.  This 
distinction  is  no  new  thing;  it  is  recognized  and  acted 
upon  by  all  the  most  enlightened  economists,  pubHcists, 
and  statesmen  in  the  world.  Neither  is  there  anything 
new  in  the  view  of  history  and  of  the  conflicts  of  policy 
which  have  here  been  presented;  but  if  that  view  is  true, 
then  the  Monroe  doctrine,  or  the  doctrine  of  the  dual 
political  organization  of  the  nations  of  the  earth,  is  a 
barbaric  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  enlightened  inter- 
national policy. 

The  United  States  enjoys  a  privileged  position  such  as 
no  other  community  of  men  ever  has  occupied  in  the 
world's  history.  European  statesmen  live  under  a  con- 
stant strain,  day  and  night,  to  avoid  war,  while  our  states- 
men can  afford  to  trifle  with  the  notion  of  war  and  to  talk 
recklessly  without  danger  of  consequences.     We  have  no 


64        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

strong  neighbors.  We  are  under  no  obligation  to  main- 
tain great  armaments.  We  have  no  heavy  debt.  If  we 
are  heavily  taxed,  it  is  our  own  choice.  No  enemy  will 
attack  us.  We  can  live  in  prosperity  and  enjoy  our 
security  if  we  choose.  Our  earth  hunger  is  satisfied  for 
the  present,  and  we  can  enjoy  its  satisfaction.  It  is  also 
provided  for  far  into  the  future.  Here,  then,  the  property- 
less  classes  can  live  in  comfort  and  acquire  property.  Our 
government  is  also  the  only  one  which  has  ever  been 
founded  with  provision,  in  its  political  theories  and  insti- 
tutions, against  pohtical  earth  hunger.  We  may  turn 
around  in  our  folly,  if  we  choose,  and  ask:  "What  is  all 
this  worth.''"  We  may  throw  it  away  and  run  in  chase 
of  all  the  old  baubles  of  glory,  and  vanity,  and  passion. 
If  we  do,  we  shall  only  add  another  to  the  long  list  of  cases 
in  which  mankind  has  sacrificed  the  greatest  blessings  in 
pursuit  of  the  greatest  follies. 


PURPOSES  AND  CONSEQUENCES 


PURPOSES  AND  CONSEQUENCES » 

The  observation  that  motives  and  purposes  have 
nothing  to  do  with  consequences  is  a  criterion  for  dis- 
tinguishing between  the  science  of  society  and  the  views, 
whims,  ideals,  and  fads  which  are  current  in  regard  to 
social  matters,  but  especially  for  distinguishing  between 
socialism  and  sociology.  Motives  and  purposes  are  in 
the  brain  and  heart  of  man.  Consequences  are  in  the 
world  of  fact.  The  former  are  infected  by  human  igno- 
rance, folly,  self-deception,  and  passion;  the  latter  are 
sequences  of  cause  and  effect  dependent  upon  the  nature 
of  the  forces  at  work.  When,  therefore,  a  man  acts, 
he  sets  forces  in  motion,  and  the  consequences  are  such 
as  those  forces  produce  under  the  conditions  existing. 
They  are  entirely  independent  of  any  notion,  will,  wish, 
or  intention  in  the  mind  of  any  man  or  men.  Conse- 
quences are  facts  in  the  world  of  experience.  If  one  man 
discharges  a  gun  at  another  and  kills  him,  he  may  say 
afterwards  that  he  "did  not  know  that  it  was  loaded." 
He  did  not  mean  to  kill.  The  consequences  remain; 
they  are  such  as  follow  from  the  structure  of  a  gun,  the 
nature  of  explosives,  and  the  relative  adjustment  of  the 
men  and  the  things.  Of  course  this  proposition  is  so 
simple  and  obvious  that  no  demonstration  can  add  to  it. 
Why  is  there  any  such  thing  as  wisdom,  unless  there  is  a 
distinction  between  a  correct  and  an  incorrect  apprehen- 
sion of  existing  conditions  and  of  the  effects  which  certain 
forces  will  produce.^  How  could  anybody  ever  make  a 
"mistake"  if  his  purposes  would  determine  the  conse- 

*  For  the  approximate  date  of  this  essay,  see  the  Preface. 


68         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

quences  of  his  acts?  Why  should  we  try  to  get  experience 
of  life  and  to  know  how  to  act  under  given  circumstances, 
unless  it  is  because  the  causes  and  effects  will  follow  their 
own  sequences  and  we,  instead  of  controlling  them  by  our 
mental  operations,  are  sure  to  be  ajffected  by  them  in 
our  interests  and  welfare?  Why,  in  short,  is  there  any 
need  of  education  if  things  in  this  world  will  follow  our 
motives  and  purposes  —  since  education  aims  to  inform 
us  of  the  order  of  things  in  this  world  to  which  we  are 
subject? 

Since  consequences  are  entirely  independent  of  motives 
and  purposes,  ethics  have  no  application  to  consequences. 
Ethics  apply  only  to  motives  and  purposes.  This  is  why 
the  whole  fashion,  which  is  now  so  popular  and  which 
most  people  think  so  noble,  of  mixing  ethics  into  eco- 
nomics and  politics,  is  utterly  ignorant  and  mischievous. 
All  policies  are  deliberate  choices  of  series  of  acts;  whether 
we  wish  good  or  ill,  when  we  choose  our  acts,  is  of  no 
importance.  The  only  important  thing  is  whether  we 
know  what  the  conditions  are  and  what  will  be  the  effects 
of  our  acts.  To  act  from  notions,  pious  hopes,  benevolent 
intentions,  or  ideals  is  sentimentalism,  because  the  mental 
states  and  operations  lack  basis  in  truth  and  reality. 
Policies,  therefore,  which  have  not  been  tested  by  all  the 
criteria  which  science  provides  are  not  to  be  discussed  at 
all.  Somebody's  notion  that  they  would  work  well  and 
give  us  a  gain,  or  that  there  is  great  need  of  them,  because 
he  thinks  he  sees  a  great  evil  at  present,  are  no  grounds 
of  action  for  sober-minded  men.  The  protective  tariff  is 
a  case,  so  far  as  it  is  a  policy  of  prosperity.  The  silver 
policy  which  was  urged  in  1896  and  1900  was  another 
example.  We  live  in  the  midst  of  a  mass  of  illustrations 
of  the  fact  that  laws  do  not  produce  the  consequences 
which  the  legislator  intended.     They  give  rise  to  other 


PURPOSES  AND  CONSEQUENCES  69 

consequences,  such,  namely,  as  the  forces  which  they  set 
in  operation,  under  the  conditions  which  exist,  necessarily 
produce. 

Acts  of  the  legislature  work  on  the  cupidity,  envy,  and 
ambition  of  men;  as  soon  as  a  law  is  passed  each  man 
afifected  by  it  takes  his  attitude  to  it.  Mass  phenomena 
result  from  the  concurrent  action  of  many.  What  results 
is  what  must  result  from  the  actions,  acting  as  causes, 
under  the  conditions;  if  the  actions  are  of  a  certain  kind, 
institutions  are  undermined,  men  are  miseducated,  the 
public  conscience  is  corrupted,  false  standards  are  set 
up;  frivolity,  idleness,  love  of  pleasure,  sycophancy,  will 
become  traits  of  the  society.  That  the  legislator  intended 
to  promote  education,  temperance,  industry,  and  purity 
is  entirely  aside  from  the  case.  In  1899  the  press  of  the 
United  States  constantly  reiterated  the  assertion  that  the 
motives  of  the  United  States  in  the  war  with  Spain  were 
noble,  humanitarian,  and  ethical,  and  that  it  never  en- 
tered into  expectation  that  the  Philippine  Islands  were 
to  come  into  our  possession.  All  this  was  entirely  idle; 
when  a  war  is  begun  it  will  rim  its  course  and  bring 
its  consequences.  What  the  intention  was  makes  no 
difference.  This,  of  course,  is  the  reason  why  no  serious 
statesman  will  enter  upon  a  war  if  he  can  help  it,  or 
will  ever  engage  in  an  adventurous  policy,  that  is,  a 
policy  whose  course  and  consequences  are  not  open  to 
his  view  so  far  as  the  utmost  training  and  effort  of  human 
reason  will  enable  him  to  see. 

Whenever  any  policy  is  adopted,  all  the  consequences 
of  it  must  be  accepted  —  those  which  are  unwelcome  as 
well  as  those  which  are  welcome.  This  works  both  ways, 
for  there  are  good  consequences  of  an  evil  policy  as  well 
as  bad  consequences  of  a  good  policy.  It  is  clear,  however, 
that  in  the  adoption  of  a  policy  the  considerations  which 


70         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

should  be  taken  into  account  are  those  which  are  de- 
duced from  the  conditions  existing  and  from  the  relations 
of  cause  and  effect  in  the  world  of  experience.  They 
are  not  ethical  at  all,  and  the  introduction  of  ethical 
notions  or  dogmas  can  never  do  anything  but  obscure 
the  study  of  the  facts  and  relations  which  alone  should 
occupy  attention. 

The  explanation  of  the  popular  confusion  between 
motives  and  consequences  is  easy.  We  men  are  daily 
compelled  to  act.  We  cannot  desist  from  activity. 
Therefore  we  have  to  make  decisions  and  go  forward. 
Hence,  in  our  judgment  of  each  other,  if  the  acts  turn  out 
to  have  evil  consequences,  we  have  to  grant  excuse  and 
indulgence  to  each  other,  if  the  intention  was  honest  and 
the  motive  pure.  It  is  no  doubt  necessary  and  right  so 
to  do,  but  that  does  not  affect  the  reality  of  the  conse- 
quences or  the  suffering  and  loss  attendant  upon  them. 
Therefore  we  turn  back  to  our  educational  operations, 
and  to  science,  in  order  to  learn  more  about  the  world 
of  fact  and  the  play  of  forces  in  it,  for  what  we  want  is, 
not  to  judge  or  excuse  each  other,  but  to  avoid  suffering 
and  loss. 

Here,  then,  is  the  great  gulf  between  all  the  sentimental, 
ethical,  humanitarian,  and  benevolent  views  about  social 
matters  and  the  scientific  view  of  the  same.  The  former 
start  out  from  some  mental  states  or  emotions  produced 
by  impressions  from  occurrences;  the  latter  starts  out 
from  the  desire  to  know  the  truth  about  facts  and  rela- 
tions in  the  world  of  experience.  In  all  the  dictionaries 
definitions  of  socialism  are  given  which  try  to  express  the 
sense  of  socialism  in  terms  of  the  pious  hope  or  benevolent 
intention  by  which  socialists  claim  to  be  animated. 
All  these  definitions  appear  to  be  colored  by  a  desire  on 
the  part  of  the  persons  who  made  them  to  give  definitions 


PURPOSES  AND  CONSEQUENCES  71 

which  would  be  satisfactory  to  socialists.  The  defini- 
tions are  substantially  alike.  Not  one  of  them  contains 
an  idea;  that  is  to  say,  not  one  of  them  expresses  a  true 
definition,  if  by  a  definition  is  understood  the  expression 
in  language  of  a  single  complete  and  well-rounded  con- 
cept. An  aspiration  for  better  things  is  common  to 
all  philosophies  and  systems;  it  is  not  a  definition  of 
any  one.  It  is  a  dififused  sentiment  and  nothing  more. 
These  definitions,  however,  are  all  true  to  the  reality  of 
the  case  in  one  respect;  they  are  all  attempts  to  bring 
within  the  compass  of  a  formula  what  is  really  a  nebulous 
state  of  mind  with  respect  to  the  phenomena  of  human 
society.  The  only  positive  characteristic  of  this  state  of 
mind  is  that  it  is  one  of  disapproval  and  dislike.  The 
suggestion  of  contrast  with  some  other  phenomena  which 
would  be  approved  and  liked  is,  of  course,  a  dispersion  of 
thought  to  the  infinite  variety  of  subjective  phantasms 
which  might  float  in  the  imagination  of  an  indefinite 
number  of  men.  The  point  is,  for  the  present  purpose, 
that  all  this  belongs  on  the  side  of  motives,  purposes, 
hopes,  intentions,  ideals,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with 
realities,  forces,  laws,  consequences,  facts,  conditions, 
relations.  The  science  of  society  finds  its  field  in  explor- 
ing the  latter;  it  has  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  the  former. 
This  is  why  it  is  true,  although  socialists  are  annoyed  by 
the  assertion,  that  socialism  is  not  a  subject  for  discussion 
by  serious  students  of  the  science  of  society.  An  econo- 
mist or  sociologist  who  discusses  socialism  is  like  a  physi- 
cist who  discusses  Jules  Verne's  novels.  He  does  not 
prove  his  own  breadth  of  mind;  he  proves  that  he  does 
not  understand  the  domain  of  his  own  vocation. 

Poetry  and  other  forms  of  the  fine  arts  express  senti- 
ments, states  of  mind,  and  emotional  reactions  on  ex- 
perience.    As  new  stimuli  they  affect  the  imagination 


72         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  produce  new  states  of  thought  and  emotion.  For 
the  greatest  part  their  effect  is  dissipated  and  exhausted 
in  these  subjective  experiences,  not  without  residual 
effect  on  character.  As  motives  of  action,  these  impulses 
of  the  emotions  produced  by  artistic  devices  do  not  stand 
in  good  repute  in  the  experience  of  mankind.  Why? 
Because  they  contain  no  knowledge  or  foresight,  and 
therefore  no  guarantee  of  consequences.  It  belongs  to 
education  to  train  men  and  women  to  criticize  and  with- 
stand impulses  of  this  class.  Pictures  of  scenes  or  objects, 
instead  of  inciting  to  action,  ought  to  act  upon  an  educated 
person  as  warnings  to  distrust  the  influence  to  which  he  is 
exposed.  It  is  not  possible  to  cross-examine  a  picture, 
even  if  it  is  a  photograph. 

A  good  education  would,  in  a  similar  manner,  teach  its 
pupils  to  resist  the  magnetism  of  a  crowd  and  the  seduc- 
tions of  popularity.  When  a  crowd,  of  which  one  is  a 
member,  are  enthused  with  a  common  sentiment  and 
purpose,  it  is  impossible  to  resist  the  influence  of  it. 
Hence  the  well-known  fact  that  men  who  act  in  a  crowd 
often  look  back  later  in  astonishment  at  their  own  actions; 
they  cannot  understand  how  they  came  to  participate  in 
the  things  which  were  done.  Education  ought  to  train 
us  so  that  when  we  are  in  a  crowd  which  is  being  swept 
away  by  a  motive,  we  should  refuse  to  join,  and  should 
instead  go  away  to  think  over  the  probable  conse- 
quences. In  like  manner  popularity,  which  seems  now 
to  be  the  grand  standard  of  action,  is  always  to  be  dis- 
trusted. "Woe  unto  you  when  all  men  speak  well  of 
you."  That  is  the  time  to  take  warning  that  you  are 
probably  going  astray.  It  is  very  smooth  and  easy  to 
run  with  the  current  and  it  involves  no  responsibility 
for  the  consequences.  WTio  then  will  consider  the  con- 
sequences?    They  will  come.     All  our   reason,   study. 


PURPOSES  AND  CONSEQUENCES  73 

science,  and  education  are  turned  to  scorn  and  ridicule 
if  popularity  is  a  proper  and  adequate  motive  of  action. 

In  fact  the  judgment  of  probable  consequences  is  the 
only  real  and  sound  ground  of  action.  It  is  because  men 
have  been  ignorant  of  the  probable  consequences,  or  have 
disregarded  them,  that  human  history  presents  such  a 
picture  of  the  devastation  and  waste  of  human  energy  and 
of  the  wreck  of  human  hopes.  If  there  is  any  salvation 
for  the  human  race  from  woe  and  misery  it  is  in  knowl- 
edge and  in  training  to  use  knowledge.  Every  investiga- 
tion of  the  world  in  which  we  live  is  an  enlargement  of 
our  power  to  judge  of  probable  consequences  when  cases 
arise  in  which  we  shall  be  compelled  to  act.  The  differ- 
ence between  motives  and  consequences,  therefore,  is 
seen  to  be  a  gulf  between  the  most  divergent  notions  of 
human  life  and  of  the  way  to  deal  with  its  problems.  It 
is  most  essential  that  all  of  us  who  believe  in  the  scientific 
view  of  life  and  its  problems  should  extricate  ourselves 
completely  from  the  trammels  of  the  sentimental  view, 
and  should  understand  the  antagonism  between  them, 
for  the  sentimental  view  has  prevailed  in  the  past  and 
we  live  now  in  a  confusion  between  the  two. 

It  is  a  still  more  positive  vice  to  act  from  an  intention 
to  attain  ideals.  Ideals  are  necessarily  phantasms. 
They  have  no  basis  in  fact.  Generally  ideals  are  formed 
under  the  stress  of  difficulty  along  the  hard  road  of  posi- 
tive endeavor.  Then  the  imagination  takes  wing  and, 
disregarding  conditions  and  forces,  revels  in  constructions 
which  are  not  limited  by  anything.^  The  ideal  for  man- 
kind would  be  to  have  material  supplies  without  limit  and 
without  labor  and  to  reproduce  without  care  or  responsi- 
bility. Minor  ideals  are  but  details  or  fractions  which 
are  not  worth  attention.     If  ideals  have  any  power  or 

1  Gumplowicz,  L.,  Staat^idee,  p.  133;  Soziologie  und  Politik,  p.  110. 


74         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

value,  it  is  as  easy  to  use  them  for  the  whole  as  for 
any  part.  Dogmatic  ideals  like  perfect  liberty,  justice, 
or  equality,  especially  if  economic  and  not  political 
liberty,  justice,  and  equality  are  meant,  can  never 
furnish  rational  or  scientific  motives  of  action  or  starting- 
points  for  rational  effort.  They  never  can  enter  into 
scientific  thinking  since  they  admit  of  no  analysis  and 
can  be  tested  by  no  canons  of  truth.  They  have  no 
footing  in  reality.  Anybody  who  says  that  "we  want 
to  build  a  republic  of  educated  labor"  is  not  defining  a 
rational  program  of  action.  He  is  only  manufacturing 
turgid  phrases.  He  who  says  that  the  state  "ought  to 
balance  the  motives  of  interest  and  benevolence"  is  not 
contributing  to  any  sober  discussion.  He  is  talking 
nonsense,  since  an  analysis  of  "state,"  "interest,"  and 
"benevolence"  would  cause  the  proposition  to  fall  into 
contradictions  and  absurdities.  The  vice  and  fallacy  of 
this  way  of  looking  at  things  is  that  it  assumes  that  men 
can  by  thinking  things  call  them  into  being;  or  that  men 
can  add  by  thinking  to  the  existing  conditions  some 
element  which  is  not  in  them.^  All  who  talk  about  the 
"power  of  ideas"  are  more  or  less  under  this  fallacy. 
It  is  a  relic  of  the  sympathetic  magic  of  savage  men. 
Serious  study  of  human  society  shows  us  that  we  can 
never  do  anything  but  use  and  develop  the  opportunities 
which  are  offered  to  us  by  the  conditions  and  conjunctures 
of  the  moment. 

Other  motives  of  action  are  derived  from  the  authorita- 
tive or  dogmatic  precepts  of  some  sect  of  philosophy  or 
religion.  These  are  what  is  commonly  called  ethics. 
In  the  ordinary  course  of  life  it  is  best  and  is  necessary 
that  for  most  of  us,  and  for  all  of  us  most  of  the  time, 
these  current  rules  of  action  which  are  traditional  and 

^  Ratzenhofer,  G.,  Die  Soziologische  Erkeontnis,  p.  365. 


PURPOSES  AND   CONSEQUENCES  75 

accepted  in  our  society  should  be  adopted  and  obeyed. 
This  is  true,  however,  only  because  it  is  impossible  for 
nearly  all  of  us  to  investigate  for  ourselves  and  win  per- 
sonal convictions,  and  it  is  impossible  for  any  of  us  to 
do  so  except  in  a  few  special  matters.  Nevertheless,  all 
this  sets  out  only  in  so  much  clearer  light  the  pre-eminent 
value  of  science,  because  science  extends,  over  the  whole 
domain  of  human  experience,  a  gradually  wider  and 
wider  perception  of  those  relations  of  man  to  earth  and 
man  to  man  on  which  human  welfare  depends.  Science 
is  investigation  of  facts  by  sound  methods,  and  deduction 
of  inferences  by  sound  processes.  The  further  it  goes 
the  more  it  enlightens  us  as  to  consequences  which  must 
ensue  if  acts  are  executed  by  which  things  and  men  are 
brought  into  the  relations  which  science  has  elucidated. 
At  the  present  moment  civilized  society  stands  at  a  point 
in  the  development  of  the  applications  of  science  to  human 
interests,  at  which  the  thing  of  the  highest  importance  is 
the  subjection  of  societal  phenomena  to  scientific  investi- 
gation, together  with  the  elimination  of  metaphysics  from 
this  entire  domain. 


RIGHTS 


RIGHTS  1 

The  notion  that  there  are  such  things  as  "natural** 
rights  is  due  to  the  fact  that  rights  originate  in  the  mores, 
and  may  remain  there  long  before  they  can  be  formulated 
(because  it  requires  some  mental  development  to  be  able 
to  formulate  them)  in  philosophical  propositions,  or  in 
laws.  The  notion  of  "natural"  rights  is  the  notion  that 
rights  have  independent  authority  in  absolute  right,  so 
that  they  are  not  relative  or  contingent,  but  absolute. 

The  interests  of  men  always  clash  in  the  competition 
of  life.  It  is  inevitable,  on  account  of  the  organization  of 
society,  that  this  should  be  so.  Even  in  the  lowest  form 
of  the  division  of  labor,  that  between  the  sexes,  independ- 
ent interests  clash  in  the  distribution  of  the  products. 
The  man  there  carries  his  point,  if  necessary,  with  the 
help  of  the  other  men,  and  a  precedent  is  established  by 
force,  which  through  subsequent  repetition  becomes  a 
law,  and  carries  in  itself  a  definition  of  rights  between 
men  and  women. 

The  question  of  right  or  rights  can  arise  only  in  the 
in-group.2  All  questions  with  outsiders  are  settled  by 
war.  It  is  meritorious  to  rob  outsiders  of  property  or 
women,  or  to  invade  any  of  their  interests;  it  is  meri- 
torious also  to  repel  and  punish  any  efforts  of  theirs  to 
invade  the  interests  of  one's  group-comrades.  War  with 
group-comrades  is  "wrong,"  because  it  lessens  the  power 
of  the  in-group  for  war  with  outsiders.     Here,  then,  is 

^  For  approximate  date,  see  Preface. 
>  Sumner,  W.  G.,  Folkways,  §§15  ff. 


80        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

where  other  devices  must  be  invented.  Chiefs  and 
medicine-men  imposed  decisions  which  were  laws  by 
precedent;  they  were  inculcated  by  ritual;  sanctioned 
after  a  few  generations  by  the  ghosts  of  ancestors;  en- 
forced by  all  members  of  the  in-group.  The  right  thing 
to  do  was  to  obey  the  tradition  or  "law."  Obedience 
was  duty.  The  notion  of  societal  welfare  was  taught  by 
the  tradition,  for  the  usage  of  ancestors  admitted  of  no 
doubt  as  true  and  right.  Thus  law,  order,  peace,  duty,  and 
rights  were  all  born  in  the  in-group  at  the  same  time,  and 
they  are  all  implicit  in  the  interest  of  war-power.  The 
rights  were  most  deeply  implicit,  and  it  took  the  longest 
time  to  draw  them  forth.  They  came  out  in  proverbs, 
maxims,  and  myths  —  as  rules  of  action  in  classes  of 
cases,  as  dicta  of  the  gods,  in  whose  name  the  shamans 
spoke.  The  usual  form  of  a  law  was  a  taboo  —  "thou 
shalt  not."  The  reason  or  motive  of  the  taboo  needed 
not  to  be  understood;  it  was  mystic  and  ritual,  because 
it  came  from  ancestors  and  was  sanctioned  by  them. 
There  was  no  reflection  on  it,  for  it  was  authoritative. 
It  was  the  most  imperative  form  of  the  mores,  because 
the  whole  society  would  enforce  it  with  the  highest 
sanctions.  There  was  no  discussion  about  it;  the  rule 
was:  obey  or  perish. 

The  earliest  taboos  probably  were  about  religious  rites 
and  duties.  In  any  primitive  code  the  things  forbidden 
range  from  things  of  primary  and  unlimited  importance 
to  trivial  matters  of  ritual;  in  the  ten  commandments 
in  the  twentieth  chapter  of  Exodus,  the  second,  third,  and 
fourth  concern  matters  of  little  social  importance  com- 
pared with  the  last  five.  When  taboos  are  analyzed, 
and  their  spirit  is  developed  in  a  positive  form,  we  get  a 
proposition  in  the  doctrine  of  rights.  For  instance,  the 
taboo  in  the  sixth  commandment  is  on  murder.     The 


RIGHTS  81 

right  of  the  murdered  man  to  live  is  a  positive  proposi- 
tion, capable  of  some  ethical  discussion  and  elaboration, 
but  not  capable  of  enactment  in  the  form  of  a  statute. 
The  right  to  property  is  a  positive  proposition  implicit 
in  the  prohibition  of  stealing,  but  no  legislature  could 
enact  the  right  of  property  in  a  modem  statute.  It  follows 
that  the  "rights"  are  philosophical  propositions  implicit 
in  the  taboos,  and  to  the  modern  way  of  thinking,  they 
seem  to  be  assumed  in  them;  but  they  were  never  formu- 
lated or  thought  by  anybody  before  the  taboo  was  started. 
Hence  the  modem  philosophers  invented  the  notion  of 
"natural'*  rights  to  bring  in  the  jural  notions  in  advance 
of  the  law.  In  the  American  Declaration  of  Independence, 
the  first  paragraph  is  made  up  of  propositions  in  political 
philosophy  to  serve  as  a  basis  of  right  for  the  secession 
of  the  colonies  from  the  British  Empire;  they  might  all  be 
admitted  and  yet  not  justify  the  secession.  The  South- 
erners clung  to  the  dogmas  and  were  led  by  them  to  believe 
that  secession  could  be  proved  in  debate,  or  deduced 
rationally  in  logic,  but  it  is  entirely  impossible  to  estab- 
lish rationally  a  right  of  revolution;  it  would  be  establish- 
ing a  state  on  the  prime  doctrine  of  anarchy.  So  it  seems 
that  the  notions  of  rights,  which  are  logically  antecedent 
to  laws,  never  can  be  put  into  laws.  They  must  re- 
main in  the  mores,  and  may  be  discussed  in  philosophy, 
but  can  be  reduced  to  formulas  not  at  all,  or  only  very 
imperfectly. 

In  our  times,  the  phraseology  of  rights  is  so  current  in 
the  mores  and  in  political  discussion,  that  almost  every 
proposition  drops  into  that  form.  Every  civilized  state 
now  contains  groups  who  are  recalcitrant  and  protesting, 
expressing  their  pain  in  terms  of  violated  rights.  They 
were  the  weaker  parties  in  some  collision  of  interests. 
There  had  to  be  a  decision  at  last  because  life  must  go 


82         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

on;  and  the  decision  was  enforced  by  the  society.  This 
was  a  use  of  force,  just  as  men  settled  disputes  with 
women  by  force.  All  the  great  fabric  of  what  we  now 
prize  so  highly  and  justly  as  rights,  has  come  out  of  such 
acts  of  force  against  some  defeated  parties;  the  only 
difference  is  that,  in  thousands  of  years,  the  dictates  of 
law  and  the  adjustment  of  interests  have  been  modified 
and  revised  by  better  views  of  life.  Rights  have  come  to 
be  expressions  of  the  rules  of  the  game  in  the  competition 
of  life.  The  in-group  has  become  stronger,  especially  in 
the  higher  civilization,  as  the  contentment  and  satisfac- 
tion of  all  members  have  become  greater.  This  has 
depended  very  much  on  the  economic  power  of  members 
of  the  group.  If  they  could  work  and  earn,  save  and 
enjoy  in  security,  they  have  not  cared  to  dispute  about 
rights;  but  if  the  struggle  for  existence  has  been  hard, 
they  have  been  apt  to  think  that  a  readjustment  of  the 
social  conventions  which  governed  the  competition  of 
life  might  be  to  their  advantage.  Hard  times,  therefore, 
have  produced  civil  conflicts  and  re-definition  of  rights. 
If  in  any  state  the  civil  power  becomes  weak,  as  in 
Turkey  or  Central  America,  rights  become  insecure,  that 
is,  non-existent.  A  man  is  heard  declaiming  and  de- 
nouncing; he  talks  about  his  "rights"  as  if  they  floated 
in  the  atmosphere,  and  ought  to  come  floating  to  him  by 
a  divine  spirit  in  them,  independently  of  all  physical  or 
conventional  conditions.  This  is  the  modern  mythology 
and  political  metaphysics  which  we  have  inherited  from 
the  eighteenth  century.  A  defeated  litigant  comes  out 
of  the  best  court  in  the  most  civilized  state,  angry,  de- 
nouncing injustice  and  violation  of  rights,  and  declaiming 
solemn  "doctrines"  of  justice  and  liberty  and,  above  all, 
of  "rights."  A  legislative  minority  also  propounds  doc- 
trines of  rights  in  order  to  establish  its  case  against  votes; 


RIGHTS  83 

and  when  it  fails,  it  hugs  its  great  principles  of  rights. 
The  philosophers,  publicists,  reformers,  and  agitators 
always  argue  in  terms  of  rights  (especially  natural  rights) ; 
they  become  rebels,  revolutionists,  anarchists,  dynamiters, 
in  the  name  of  rights,  and,  if  they  come  to  prison  or  the 
scaffold,  they  still  declaim  in  terms  of  the  same  vocabu- 
lary. A  criminal  becomes  a  martyr  if  he  can  put  his 
crime  under  some  great  generalization  about  rights. 
We  have  all  been  educated  by  the  modern  civil  mores  to 
think  of  rights  as  something  metaphysical,  above  and 
behind  laws  and  institutions,  greater  than  they,  and  with 
some  inherent  power  to  transmute  themselves  out  of 
oratory  and  resolutions  into  facts. 

It  is  certainly  far  wiser  to  think  of  rights  as  rules  of  the 
game  of  social  competition  which  are  current  now  and 
here.  They  are  not  absolute.  They  are  not  antecedent 
to  civilization.  They  are  a  product  of  civilization,  or  of 
the  art  of  living  as  men  have  practised  it  and  experi- 
mented on  it,  through  the  whole  course  of  history.  They 
must  be  enjoyed  under  existing  circumstances,  that  is, 
subject  to  limitations  of  tradition,  custom,  and  fact. 
To  be  real  they  must  be  recognized  in  laws  and  provided 
for  by  institutions,  but  a  great  many  of  them,  being 
inchoate,  unsettled,  partial,  and  limited,  are  still  in  the 
mores,  and  therefore  vague  and  in  need  of  further  study 
and  completion  by  courts  and  legislatures.  This  further 
work  will  be  largely  guided  by  the  mores  as  to  cognate 
matters,  and  by  the  conceptions  of  right  and  social  welfare 
which  the  mores  produce. 


EQUALITY 


EQUALITY » 

The  thirst  for  equality  is  a  characteristic  of  modem 
mores.  In  the  Middle  Ages  inequality  was  postulated  in 
all  social  doctrines  and  institutions.  There  were  some 
"prophets"  who  arose  to  talk  of  equality  in  the  way  of 
poetry,  and  some  popular  leaders  who  used  the  notion  in 
popular  revolts,  but  they  were  rebels  and  heretics,  and 
they  preached  to  deaf  ears.  The  church  also,  which 
never  failed  to  have  a  prescription  for  every  human  taste 
or  appetite,  had  its  construction  of  equality.  Ecclesi- 
astics and  inquisitors  treated  all  men  as  equal  before  the 
church,  sometimes  with  great  effect,  when  an  unpopular 
king  or  prince  was  also  a  heretic.  The  doctrine  of  equal- 
ity flattered  ecclesiastical  vanity. 

Modern  notions  of  equality  are  no  doubt  to  be  ex- 
plained historically  as  revolts  against  mediaeval  in- 
equality and  status.  Natural  rights,  human  rights, 
equal  rights,  equality  of  all  men,  are  phases  of  a  notion 
which  began  far  back  in  the  Middle  Ages,  in  obscure  and 
neglected  writings,  or  in  the  polemical  utterances  of  sects 
and  parties.  They  were  counter-assertions  against  the 
existing  system  which  assumed  that  rights  were  obtained 
from  sovereigns,  from  which  it  resulted  that  each  man  had 
such  rights  as  his  ancestors  and  he  had  been  able  to  get  — 
with  the  further  result  that  perhaps  no  two  men  had  the 
same  or  equal  rights.  The  case  became  different  when, 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  mediaeval  system  was 
gone,  the  fighting  value  of  the  doctrine  of  equality  was 

^  For  approximate  date,  see  Preface. 


88         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

exhausted,  and  it  was  turned  into  a  dogma  of  absolute 
validity  and  universal  application. 

The  assertion  that  all  men  are  equal  is  perhaps  the 
purest  falsehood  in  dogma  that  was  ever  put  into  human 
language;  five  minutes'  observation  of  facts  will  show  that 
men  are  unequal  through  a  very  wide  range  of  variation. 
Men  are  not  simple  units;  they  are  very  complex;  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  a  unit  man.  Therefore  we  cannot 
measure  men.  If  we  take  any  element  of  man  and 
measure  men  for  it,  they  always  fall  under  a  curve  of 
probable  error.  When  we  say  "man"  for  human  being, 
we  overlook  distinctions  of  age  and  sex.  Males  of  dif- 
ferent ages  are  not  equal;  men  and  women  are  not  equal 
in  the  struggle  for  existence.  Women  are  handicapped 
by  a  function  which  causes  disabilities  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,  and  this  difference  produces  immense  disparity 
in  the  sexes  as  to  all  interests  through  all  human  life. 

The  ground  is  then  shifted  to  say  that  all  men  should 
be  equal  before  the  law,  as  an  ideal  of  political  institutions. 
They  never  have  been  so  yet  in  any  state;  practically 
it  seems  impossible  to  realize  such  a  state  of  things.  It 
is  an  ideal.  If  this  doctrine  is  a  fighting  doctrine,  if  it 
means  that  the  law  should  create  no  privileges  for  one, 
or  some,  which  others  do  not  obtain  under  the  same  legal 
conditions,  we  should  all  take  sides  with  it  for  the  pur- 
poses of  the  fight.  Even  this,  however,  would  remain  an 
ideal,  an  object  of  hope  and  effort,  not  a  truth. 

When  we  come  nearer  to  the  real  thing  which  men  have 
in  mind  we  find  that  they  actually  complain  of  inequality 
of  fortune,  of  realization,  of  earthly  lot,  of  luxury  and 
comfort,  of  power  and  satisfaction.  This  is  what  they 
want  and  this  craving  is  what  is  in  the  mores.  Nearly 
all,  when  they  say  that  they  want  equality,  only  use 
another  form  of  expression  to  say  that  they  want  more 


EQUALITY  89 

welfare  than  they  have,  because  they  take  as  a  standard 
all  which  any  one  has  and  they  find  many  who  have  more 
than  themselves.  In  the  nineteenth  century,  the  eigh- 
teenth-century rhetoric  about  natural  rights,  equal  rights, 
etc.,  gradually  took  on  the  form  of  a  demand  for  the 
materialistic  equaUty  of  enjoyment.  Every  change  by 
which  rhetorical  phrases  are  set  aside  and  real  meaning 
is  revealed  is  a  gain.  The  fact  of  the  mores  of  present- 
day  society  is  that  there  is  in  them  an  intense  craving  for 
something  which  is  a  political  phantasm.  There  is  no 
reason  whatever  why  it  should  be  expected  that  men 
should  enjoy  equally,  for  that  means  that  all  should  have 
means  of  enjoyment  equal  to  the  greatest  which  any  one 
has;  there  is  nothing  in  history,  science,  religion,  or 
politics  which  could  give  warrant  for  such  an  expectation 
imder  any  circumstances.  We  know  of  no  force  which 
could  act  for  the  satisfaction  of  human  desires  so  as  to 
make  the  satisfaction  equal  for  a  number  of  men,  and  we 
know  of  no  interference  by  "the  State,"  that  is,  by  a 
committee  of  men,  which  could  so  modify  the  operation 
of  natural  forces  as  to  produce  that  result.  There  is  an 
old  distinction  between  commutative  and  distributive 
justice  which  goes  back  to  the  Greeks,  and  which  some 
writers  of  the  nineteenth  century  have  brought  out  again. 
Distributive  justice  is  justice  in  which  all  personal  cir- 
cumstances are  duly  allowed  for  so  that  all  are  made 
"equal"  on  an  absolute  standard.  Of  course  equality 
must  necessarily  be  carried  to  some  such  conception  at 
last.  It  is  evident  that  God  alone  could  give  distributive 
justice;  and  we  find,  in  this  world  in  which  we  are,  that 
God  has  not  seen  fit  to  provide  for  it  at  all. 


THE  FIRST  STEPS  TOWARD 
A  MILLENNIUM 


THE   FIRST  STEPS  TOWARD  A  MILLENNIUM 

[1888] 

We  are  offered  countless  projects  of  social  reform, 
the  aim  of  which  is  to  bring  in  the  millennium.  Let  us 
see  what  the  first  condition  of  such  projects  must  be, 
and  whether  we  are  prepared  to  fulfil  it. 

The  student  of  social  problems,  who  investigates  them 
without  preconceived  or  pet  notions,  finds  again  and 
again  that  he  is  brought,  at  the  end  of  his  analysis,  face 
to  face  with  this  fact:  it  is  a  question  of  population.  It 
is  a  question  of  marriage,  of  the  reproduction  of  the 
species;  of  parental  responsibility,  competency,  and 
duty;  in  short,  of  the  family.  In  all  the  social  specula- 
tions of  the  day,  however,  scarcely  any  attention  is  ever 
paid  to  this  range  of  subjects.  It  is  assumed  that  every 
one  has  a  right  to  marry  without  responsibility  to  others, 
that  society  has  no  right  to  intervene,  that  children 
come  into  the  world  without  any  antecedents  upon  which 
reason  and  conscience  could  operate,  that  family  life  is 
sacred,  even  to  the  extent  that  parental  folly,  ignorance, 
and  caprice  must  enjoy  a  prerogative  of  wasting  or  per- 
verting the  youth  of  children.  Liberty,  the  rights  of 
parents,  and  the  whole  non-interference  theory,  are  here 
introduced  when  nothing  has  been  heard  of  them  before. 

I  maintain  (1)  that  the  part  of  our  social  code  and 
social  creed  which  wants  re-examination  and  reconstruc- 
tion is  that  which  relates  to  marriage  and  the  family; 
and  (2)  that,  if  there  is  to  be  any  state  regulation  at  all. 


94         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

the  place  where  it  ought  to  begin  is  with  marriage  and 
the  family. 

What  is  the  existing  code  and  creed  about  marriage 
and  the  family? 

It  is  held  that  if  a  man  and  woman  want  to  many, 
and  if  they  are  of  the  minimum  age  fixed  by  law,  no  one 
is  warranted  in  interfering  with  them.  The  novels  have 
sedulously  taught  that  marriage  should  be  founded  only 
on  love;  that  love  is  some  emotional  state  or  experience 
that  is  not  subject  to  reason  and  conscience;  indeed, 
that  there  is  some  ethical  error  in  resisting  it;  and  that 
it  is  the  one  human  experience  that  is  not  subject  to  law 
or  regulation.  To  judge  from  the  tone  of  the  newspapers 
about  an  elopement,  or  a  marriage  in  defiance  of  the 
advice  of  parents,  this  kind  of  marriage  has  some  merits 
over  any  other  kind.  Nobody  is  supposed  to  have  any 
right  to  see  to  it  that  the  parties  to  the  marriage  have 
compatibility  of  temper,  or  suflBcient  acquaintance  with 
each  other;  and,  above  all,  it  is  considered  sordid  and 
mean  to  raise  the  question  whether  they  can  support 
themselves  and  their  children. 

Nothing  in  the  educational  system  is  planned  to  incul- 
cate high  ideas  of  the  momentous  decision  involved  in 
uniting  two  lives,  much  less  to  make  young  people  under- 
stand that  parenthood  is  the  most  awful  responsibility 
human  beings  ever  accept.  A  false,  or  perhaps  I  might 
more  justly  say,  an  ill-defined,  modesty  causes  the  whole 
subject  to  be  set  aside.  It  is  not  easy  to  deal  with  it 
within  convenient  limits,  yet  to  do  it  justice.  Occa- 
sionally a  bold  preacher  devotes  a  sermon  to  some  phase 
of  it,  or  a  school-teacher  of  extraordinary  conscientious- 
ness and  good  judgment  will  exert  a  happy  and  success- 
ful influence  on  a  small  number  of  persons;  but  this  is 
nothing  compared  with  the  mis-education  from  mawkish 


FIRST  STEPS  TOWARD  A  MILLENNIUM       95 

novels,  prurient  newspaper  stories,  and  current  dis- 
cussion of  scandals,  elopements,  and  divorces.  Is  it 
right  that  modesty  should  impose  silence  always  on  the 
right  side  only?  Is  it  right  that  the  current  popular 
code  should  always  go  unchallenged? 

We  have  broken  to  a  considerable  extent  with  the 
doctrine  of  the  last  century  about  the  respective  rights 
and  duties  of  parents  and  children,  which  was  based  on 
the  dictum  that  the  parent  is  "the  author  of  the  child's 
being."  The  notion  was  that  the  parent  had  conferred 
such  a  blessing  on  the  child  is  giving  him  existence  that 
all  the  duties  were  on  the  side  of  the  child,  and  all  the 
rights  on  the  side  of  the  parent.  Such  a  dictum  with  the 
deductions  drawn  from  it  cannot  stand  before  a  ration- 
alizing generation.  Wlien  once  a  child  has  reached  an 
age  to  get  a  glimmering  sense  of  what  kind  of  a  world 
this  is,  there  are  very  few  fathers  who  would  dare  to 
invoke  this  dictum  as  a  ground  of  parental  rights,  and 
there  are  many  who  might  find  that  the  child  would 
turn  upon  them  with  the  most  terrific  accusation  that 
could  possibly  be  formulated:  "You  knew  what  kind  of 
a  world  this  is,  and  what  kind  of  a  man  you  were  in  it. 
You  knew  that  you  were  a  failure,  or  a  drunkard,  or  a 
gambler,  or  a  felon.  How  dared  you  beget  me,  and  put 
me  in  the  world  to  bear  what  you  had  entailed?" 

I  say  that  we  have  broken  with  this  old-fashioned 
notion;  but  we  have  not  yet,  so  far  as  I  know,  adopted 
any  other  consistent  principle,  and  we  shall  not  get  the 
rights  and  duties  on  a  sound  basis  until  we  accept  the 
doctrine  that  the  parents,  having  assumed  the  liberty 
and  authority  of  marriage  and  parenthood,  have  all  the 
responsibility,  and  all  the  duties,  and  that  it  is  the  child 
who  has  the  rights.  Parents,  who  have  brought  chil- 
dren into  the  world,  are  bound  by  all  the  deductions 


96        EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

that  flow  from  the  relationship  that  they  have  brought 
about,  to  sacrifice  themselves  that  the  children  may  have 
success  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

Both  morally  and  socially  the  doctrine  here  laid  down 
is  the  one  that  underlies  human  welfare.  There  is  no 
such  penalty  for  error  and  folly  as  to  see  one's  children 
suffer  for  it.  There  is  no  such  reward  for  a  well-spent 
life  as  to  see  one's  children  well-started  in  life  owing  to 
their  parents'  good  health,  good  principles,  fixed  charac- 
ter, good  breeding  —  in  general,  the  whole  outfit  that 
enables  men  to  fight  the  battle  of  life  with  success.  Fur- 
thermore, we  are  not  called  upon  to  plot  and  plan  for 
"the  great  interests  of  society,"  and  all  the  other  vague 
whims  that  are  presented  to  us  in  high-sounding  phrases. 
The  great  social  interests  solve  themselves  if  every  one 
simply  attends  to  family  duties,  keeping  himself  clean  and 
honest,  and  bringing  up  his  children  in  virtue  and  good 
discipline.  The  reformers  who  are  constantly  dinning 
their  social  nostrums  and  state  interference  in  our  ears 
suppose  that  they  are  charged  and  commissioned  to 
organize  all  the  rest  of  us  into  "great  social  movements.'* 
In  any  sound  study  of  the  facts  it  will  appear  that  the 
derived,  wider,  and  more  abstract  interests  are  not  to 
be  pursued  directly,  that  they  never  can  be  satisfied  by 
direct  effort,  that  they  flow  of  themselves  as  conse- 
quences from  right  living  in  the  household  and  in  the 
individual  career. 

Let  us  go  back  now  to  our  young  couple.  Having  mar- 
ried for  love  and  taken  their  liberty,  they  find  that  they 
were  mistaken,  and  that  there  is  an  incompatibility  of 
temper;  instead,  however,  of  bearing  their  own  burden, 
and  abiding  by  the  duties  that  they  have  undertaken 
to  each  other  and  to  their  children,  they  now  invoke 
the  interference  of  the  rest  of  society,  by  its  laws  and 


FIRST  STEPS  TOWARD  A  MILLENNIUM       97 

civil  institutions,  to  release  them  from  the  consequences 
of  their  own  act.  They  find  themselves  constrained 
and  dissatisfied.  Liberty  formerly  meant  that  they  must 
create  relationships,  if  they  wanted  to  do  so,  regardless 
of  the  interests  of  bystanders;  liberty  now  means  that 
they  must  be  allowed  to  break  the  relationship,  if  they 
want  to  do  so,  regardless  of  the  rights  and  interests  that 
have  grown  out  of  their  former  act.  If  their  children 
are  in  this  way  rendered  homeless  or  parentless,  then 
their  neighbors,  either  through  public  or  private  charity, 
may  assume  the  burden  of  caring  for  them. 

If  no  such  rupture  of  the  marriage  occurs,  it  may  yet 
turn  out  that  the  parents  are  not  capable  of  earning, 
or  that  they  are  extravagant  and  foolish  in  their  expend- 
iture, or  that  they  are  shiftless,  idle,  or  vicious.  Let  us 
not  here  make  the  mistake  of  assuming  that  some  of  us 
are  good  and  strong  and  others  bad  and  weak,  for  that 
would  be  to  misconceive  the  whole  case.  All  of  us  are 
only  more  or  less  idle,  vicious,  and  weak.  We  all  have 
to  fight  the  same  temptations,  and  each  one  has  enough 
to  do  to  fight  his  own  battle;  that  is  just  the  reason  why 
it  is  unjust  and  socially  ruinous  to  reward  one  for  hav- 
ing done  his  own  duty,  simply  by  making  him  go  on  to 
do  other  people's  duty.  If  the  idle  and  vicious  stood  by 
themselves  as  individuals,  they  could  almost  always  be 
left  to  themselves.  It  is  the  children  who  make  the  prob- 
lem great  now,  and  who  carry  it  into  the  future. 

As  we  have  seen  above,  the  rights  lie  with  the  chil- 
dren and  against  the  parents  in  the  first  instance.  Now 
we  see  that  the  rights  lie  with  the  society  against  the 
parents,  in  the  second  instance,  for  it  is  society  that  will 
suffer  from  the  failure  of  the  parent  to  do  the  parent's 
duty,  and  it  is  society  that  will  have  to  bear  the  burden 
that  the  parent  has  allowed  to  fall.    Who,  however,  is 


98         EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

"society"?  It  can  be  only  those  other  parents  who 
have  done  a  parent's  duties,  through  unknown  struggles 
and  self-denial.  It  has  very  rarely  been  argued,  so  far 
as  I  know,  that  the  state  might  fairly  enforce  against 
the  parent  his  responsibility,  or  that  it  might  separate 
his  children  from  him,  if  it  were  obliged  to  assume  his 
duties  on  account  of  his  worthlessness.  On  the  con- 
trary, such  a  view  of  the  matter  is  almost  always  met 
with  an  outcry  against  inhumanity.  Perhaps  such  an 
outcry  is  just;  but  what  I  maintain  is,  that  if  we  are 
not  prepared  to  interfere  in  any  way  at  all  with  freedom 
of  marriage  or  the  continuance  of  family  life  between 
two  people  who  are  not  fit  to  be  parents,  then  our  plans 
of  throwing  all  the  consequences  on  the  good  parents  is 
a  p>olicy  by  which  society  continually  uses  up  its  best 
members,  while  it  preserves  and  stimulates  the  reproduc- 
tion of  its  bad  ones. 

Let  us  go  on  with  some  details  and  see  if  this  is 
not  so. 

The  children,  being  here,  must  be  educated.  Plainly, 
it  belongs  to  the  parent  to  educate  them.  In  contem- 
plating marriage  a  man  is  just  as  much  bound  to  look 
forward  to  the  expense  of  educating  as  of  feeding  his  chil- 
dren. If  the  state  —  that  is,  again,  his  neighbors  — 
will  have  to  educate  his  children  for  him,  one  important 
link  in  the  chain  of  moral  responsibility  that  is  essen- 
tial to  the  moral  order  of  society  is  broken.  I  know  of 
no  provision  at  all  for  bringing  home  to  parents  the  duty 
of  educating  their  children,  or  the  value  of  education  to 
their  children;  on  the  contrary,  all  the  existing  arrange- 
ments ofifer  education  as  a  thing  to  be  taken  or  left  by 
those  for  whom  it  is  intended.  Compulsory  attendance 
is  making  some  advance;  but  here  again,  where  liberty 
has  no  application,  we  are  met  with  an  outcry  in  favor  of 


FIRST  STEPS  TOWARD  A  MILLENNIUM       99 

liberty  so  much  contemned  everywhere  else.  For  how 
fares  it  with  the  Hberty  of  the  parents  who  have  done 
their  duty?  They  must  pay  for  the  school.  They  are 
told  how  essential  schools  are  to  make  good  citizens, 
how  much  better  it  is  to  pay  for  schools  than  for  jails, 
and  so  on.  But,  if  the  tax-payer  has  any  rights,  why  is 
it  not  one  of  the  first  of  them,  after  he  has  provided 
schools,  under  the  view  of  the  matter  just  rehearsed, 
that  he  should  know  that  those  for  whom  the  schools 
are  provided  are  taking  the  good  of  them,  and  that  the 
commonwealth  will  have  the  advantages  for  which  he 
is  paying? 

Instead  of  being  guaranteed  of  this  fact,  he  is  met 
by  a  new  demand  that  he  shall  provide  text-books  and 
stationery.  In  order  to  make  an  argument  for  schools 
supported  by  taxation,  it  has  been  said  that  schools 
"support  republican  institutions,"  "save  jails,'*  etc., 
etc.  If  that  is  true,  schools  exist  for  the  good  of  the 
community  and  not  for  the  purpose  of  fitting  the  chil- 
dren to  fulfil  their  careers  on  earth.  Then  the  schools 
are  not  a  good  to  be  struggled  for  and  paid  for  by  those 
who  get  the  good  of  them,  but  the  children  go  to  school 
in  order  to  subject  themselves  to  the  discipline  that  the 
good  of  the  community  imposes  upon  them.  In  that  view 
of  the  matter,  it  is  consistent  and  reasonable,  as  well  as 
quite  in  accord  with  human  nature,  that  it  should  be 
constantly  necessary  to  provide  new  inducements  in  order 
to  secure  attendance.  It  is  said  by  those  in  a  position 
to  know  that  the  children  of  Connecticut  do  not,  on  the 
average,  take  more  than  one-half  of  the  schooling  that 
the  tax-payers  provide  for  them  all. 

In  the  next  stage,  however,  the  tax-payer  is  called 
upon  to  pay  inspectors  and  agents  to  seek  out  and  force 
upon  the  children  of  his  negligent  neighbor  the  boon 


100       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

that  he  has  paid  for,  but  which  the  neighbor  cannot 
even  appreciate.  The  inspector  reports  that  the  parent 
has  taken  the  children  from  school  at  an  early  age,  in 
order  to  put  them  at  work  for  gain,  that  the  more  chil- 
dren he  has  the  more  he  gets  out  of  their  wages  for  his 
own  benefit,  and  that  the  children  are  exploited  by  their 
parents  without  any  of  a  parent's  feeling. 

Next  comes  the  "working-man."  He  demands  that 
the  children  shall  be  peremptorily  and  absolutely  for- 
bidden to  work,  not  in  order  that  they  may  go  to  school, 
but  that  they  may  not  compete  with  the  working-man 
in  the  labor  market.  The  parent  forces  the  child  to  work 
for  the  parent's  benefit,  and  the  non-parent  forces  the 
child  not  to  work  for  the  benefit  of  the  non-parent.  In 
this  contest,  who  defends  the  rights  of  the  children? 
If  anybody  needs  state  protection  evidently  it  is  they, 
for  they  are  being  sacrificed  between  two  selfish  inter- 
ests. The  politician,  however,  asks  only:  Who  has 
the  most  votes?  and,  finding  that  these  are  the  non- 
parents,  he  eagerly  passes  a  law  to  forbid  the  children 
to  work,  leaving  all  consequences  to  care  for  themselves.^ 
The  tax-payer  is  called  upon  to  pay  for  some  more 
inspectors  to  enforce  this  law.  If  the  children  by  happy 
accident  find  their  way  to  school,  well  and  good;  if  they 
escape  school,  or  are  abroad  and  idle  during  half  the 
year  when  school  is  not  in  session,  they  take  to  vaga- 
bondage and  idleness  with  all  its  vices;  for  they  are  for- 
bidden to  work  at  all,  as  if  work  were  in  its  nature  a 
vice  and  not  simply  in  its  excess  a  harm. 

The  children  are  thus  rapidly  preparing  as  candidates 
for  the  reform  school  and  the  industrial  school,  once 
more  at  the  expense  of  the  tax-payer;    or  he  is  called 

^  See  the  report  of  the  State  Board  of  Education  of  Connecticut,  1886,  on 
the  Child  Labor  Law  of  that  state. 


FIRST  STEPS  TOWARD  A  MILLENNIUM      101 

upon  to  subscribe  to  voluntary  charitable  organizations, 
which  aim  to  reform  abandoned  children.^ 

One  of  the  latest  novelties,  now,  in  this  same  direc- 
tion, is  the  complaint  that  the  education  which  the 
burden-bearing  part  of  the  community  has  furnished 
for  the  whole  is  not  of  a  good  kind;  that  the  gift  is  not  a 
suitable  one;  that  the  beneficiaries  of  it  are  not  much 
to  blame  for  rejecting  it,  because  it  is  not  of  the  right 
kind.  It  is  proposed  that  the  tax-payer  once  more  shall 
come  forward  and  provide  trade  schools,  or  manual  labor 
schools.  This  proposition  is  as  yet  so  vague  and  mul- 
tiform that  it  is  impossible  to  discuss  it.  The  most  sen- 
sible persons  who  are  interested  in  the  plan  agree  that 
schools  to  teach  handicrafts  or  trades  as  a  means  of  liveli- 
hood would  not  be  defensible;  but  may  not  the  tax- 
payer think  it  rather  hard  that,  after  he  has  provided 
schools  and  libraries,  and  high  schools  with  all  the  para- 
phernalia of  science,  he  should  be  told  that  it  is  all  a 
mistake,  and  that  he  has  to  begin  all  over  again,  on  a 
new  line  of  development,  which  the  same  guides  now 
believe  to  be  the  correct  one? 

Now  this  generation  of  children,  when  they  come  to 
maturity,  marry  —  the  earlier  the  more  dependent  they 
are  and  the  less  serious  their  views  of  life  —  and  begin 
the  story  of  their  own  parents,  and  their  own  childhood, 
all  over  again.  At  middle  life  they  find  themselves  over- 
burdened, disappointed,  unfit  to  cope  with  the  diflficul- 
ties  of  life,  a  discontented  class  that  the  respectable  and 
burden-bearing  part  of  society  are  once  more  told  is  a 

^  While  writing,  I  find  in  a  daily  paper  the  report  of  a  county  home  for 
abandoned  children,  in  which  it  is  said:  "It  will  be  noticed  that  one  hundred 
and  thirty-one  of  these  [one  hundred  and  forty-seven]  children  were  taken 
from  the  degraded  classes,  even  the  homeless  ones  being  homeless  by  reason 
of  the  viciousness  of  parents,  one  or  both  of  whom,  in  all  cases  except  eight  of 
the  one  hundred  and  thirty-one,  are  living  and  are  able-bodied." 


102       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

problem  for  them  to  solve.  One  of  the  great  dogmas 
is  that  all  men  are  equal,  but  a  man  who  has  earned  a 
loaf  of  bread  and  one  who  has  not  earned  a  loaf  of  bread 
find  themselves  unequal.  Let  the  tax-payer  look  to  him- 
self, if  he  cannot  solve  that!  The  man  who  has  spent 
all  his  money  and  the  one  who  has  not  find  themselves 
very  unequal.  According  to  the  current  philosophy, 
the  blame  for  this  is  not  with  the  man  who  wasted  his 
youth  and  rejected  his  chances  of  education,  nor  with 
his  father  who  failed  of  all  his  family  and  social  duties, 
but  with  the  respectable  and  dutiful  citizen  who  pro- 
vided the  educational  facilities  for  others  and  profited 
by  them  for  himself. 

If  any  of  the  negligent  persons  become  guilty  of  crime, 
then  at  last  the  patient  tax-payer  might  believe  that  the 
experiment  was  over,  that  his  responsibility  was  dis- 
charged, that  he  had  done  all  that  he  could  possibly  be 
asked  to  do  for  that  person,  and  that  the  criminal  now  in 
prison  would  be  forced  to  earn  his  own  living  and  spend 
his  time  in  sober  industry.  Not  so,  however.  It  is  now 
the  turn  of  the  penologist,  who  demands  that  the  prisons 
shall  be  managed  so  as  to  reform  the  criminals,  and 
"without  regard  to  pecuniary  considerations."  The 
"working-man"  also,  not  knowing  what  he  wants  nor 
why  he  wants  it,  and  plainly  uninformed  or  deluded  as 
to  the  facts  and  relations  in  question,  but  possessed  of 
new  political  power  which  he  is  eager  to  exercise  and  for 
which  he  is  not  yet  held  to  any  due  responsibility, 
demands  that  the  labor  of  the  convicts  shall  be  stopped 
or  wasted.  The  latter  seem  to  think  that  a  criminal 
becomes  harmful  when  he  goes  to  work,  and  the  former 
that  a  prison  is  a  kind  of  mill  for  washing  so  many  crim- 
inals as  may  be  caught,  and  thus  operating  an  arith- 
metical diminution  of  the  criminal  class. 


FIRST  STEPS  TOWARD  A  MILLENNIUM      103 

Here  we  have,  then,  a  system  in  which  the  commu- 
nity is  divided  into  responsible  and  irresponsible  classes. 
Every  duty  discharged  by  the  former  serves  only  to  lay 
the  basis  for  a  new  duty  to  be  imposed;  every  duty 
neglected  by  the  latter  serves  only  to  lay  the  basis  for  a 
new  privilege  or  exemption  to  be  claimed.  In  this  system 
nothing  at  all  is  done  to  prevent  or  lessen  the  propaga- 
tion of  the  social  disease,  but,  on  the  contrary,  everything 
is  done  to  nurse  and  develop  it  by  cutting  off  such  direct 
penalties  as  would,  in  the  order  of  nature,  be  connected 
with  the  evil,  and  would  react  upon  it  to  restrict  it.  All 
the  palliatives  are  applied  at  the  exp>ense  of  those  that 
have  done  as  much  as  men  ever  do  to  crush  and  conquer 
the  social  disease  in  themselves  and  their  children. 
Those,  therefore,  who  would  make  good  parents  must 
delay  marriage  by  as  much  as  they  must  be  prepared 
for  all  the  extra  burdens  that  the  state  will  lay  upon  them 
as  soon  as  they  show  that  they  mean  to  pay  their  way; 
and  those  who  would  make  bad  parents  are  set  free  to 
marry  the  earlier  by  as  much  as  they  are  assured  that 
the  state  will  come  to  their  assistance,  in  one  way  and 
another,  so  soon  as  they  show  that  they  do  not  mean  to 
pay  their  way.  We  are  therefore  increasing  evils  and 
deteriorating  our  society. 

If  now  we  should  reverse  our  policy,  two  courses  would 
be  open  to  us.  We  could  either  limit  all  our  active  meas- 
ures to  securing,  as  far  as  possible,  those  who  will  con- 
form to  the  rules  of  right  living,  against  any  harm  from 
those  who  refuse  to  learn  how  we  must  all  conduct  our- 
selves in  order  that  we  may  all  prosper,  leaving  the 
latter  to  the  stern  school  of  experience;  or,  we  could  bring 
restrictions  to  bear  on  marriage  and  family  life.  At  least 
it  is  evident  that,  if  we  are  going  to  bring  interference 
to  bear,  in  the  hope  of  dealing  with  social  evils,  our 


104       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

interference  will  never  be  effective  until  it  touches 
marriage  and  the  family.  The  objective  point  can  be 
defined.  Measures  which  bear  upon  it  will  not  be  con- 
structive,^ but  direct,  if  we  are  prepared  to  make 
them;  if  we  are  not  prepared  to  make  them,  let  us  at 
least  desist  from  those  measures  that  only  use  up  our 
best  social  elements.  It  is  astonishing  how  invariably 
thorough  study  of  social  phenomena  brings  out  the  fact 
that  social  devices  produce  the  very  opposite  results 
from  those  that  were  aimed  at.  The  social  reforms  of 
the  last  fifty  years  have  very  largely  consisted  in  con- 
verting other  social  ills  into  taxation;  but  taxation  is  a 
most  potent  cause  of  social  ills;  when,  therefore,  the 
circle  shall  have  been  completed,  how  much  shall  we 
have  gained  .f' 

One  of  the  favorite  phrases  of  those  who  seek  a  for- 
mula under  which  to  introduce  their  devices  is  that  the 
state  should  take  any  measures  that  will  "make  better 
men."  A  state  can  never  make  men  of  any  kind;  a 
state  consumes  men.  New-born  children  are  not  sol- 
diers, or  taxpayers,  or  laborers.  Years  of  cost  of  pro- 
duction must  be  spent  upon  them  before  they  can  be 
any  of  these  contributors  to  society.     It  is  the  work  of 

^  The  town  of  New  Haven,  being  about  to  build  a  new  alms-house,  a  peti- 
tion is  presented  to  the  selectmen,  in  which  the  petitioners  "do  hereby  protest 
against  any  parties  or  firms  being  allowed  to  compete  for  the  contract  to  erect 
said  buildings,  who  refuse  to  accede  to  the  request  for  shorter  hours  of  labor  and 
just  compensation,  but  who  do  insist  on  more  hours  and  less  wages,  which  we 
claim  is  injurious  and  detrimental  to  the  best  interests  of  every  community, 
and  as  it  cannot  be  denied  that  low  wages,  and  long  hours  of  toil  tend  to  dis- 
couragement, which  leads  to  idleness,  and  which  is  one  of  the  great  causes  of 
poverty  and  crime,  and  produces  in  every  community  that  class  that  becomes 
a  tax  and  a  burden,  and  necessitates,  as  in  the  present  case,  the  erection  of 
buildings  for  their  care  and  support  at  the  public  expense,  etc."  This  tortuous 
and  involved  series  of  dogmatic  generalizations  is  hardly  a  caricature  of  the 
kind  of  argumentation  which  is  brought  forward  in  educated  circles  whenever 
a  measure  of  social  policy  is  imder  discussion. 


FIRST  STEPS  TOWARD  A   MILLENNIUM     105 

the  family,  the  church,  the  school,  and  other  educational 
institutions  to  bring  them  up  and  make  them  as  good  men 
as  possible,  and  then  turn  them  over  to  the  state  as  cit- 
izens. The  state,  therefore,  does  not  make  them;  it 
uses  them  up;  it  does  not  produce,  it  costs.  The  Hves 
of  generations  are  spent  to  maintain  it,  and  carry  it  on. 
The  utmost  that  the  state  can  do  is  to  satisfy  the  pur- 
poses of  its  existence  for  these  generations  in  return  for 
what  they  have  spent  on  it.  The  soldiers  whom  the 
state  uses  up  never  come  to  life  again.  The  taxes  which 
are  paid  to  it  never  come  back  again.  If  the  home  insti- 
tutions produce  better  men,  and  they  put  better  efforts 
into  the  state  (as  they  doubtless  will),  then  they  can 
get  out  of  the  state  a  better  fulfilment  of  state  functions; 
but  every  device  for  trying  to  get  out  of  the  state  any- 
thing more  than  is  put  into  it  has  no  other  effect  than 
to  make  the  state  cost  more. 


LIBERTY 

1887-1889 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY? 

[1889] 

It  might  seem  that  liberty  was  one  of  the  most  trite 
and  worn  of  all  subjects.  It  will  be  the  aim  of  this  essay 
to  show  that  liberty  is  the  least  well  analyzed  of  all  the 
important  social  conceptions,  that  it  is  the  thing  at  stake 
in  the  most  important  current  controversies,  and  that  it 
needs  to  be  defended  as  much  against  those  who  abuse 
it  as  against  those  who  deride  it. 

In  the  first  place,  I  put  together  some  citations  which 
will,  I  think,  justify  me  in  bringing  this  subject  forward 
again. 

1.  Rodbertus  is  the  one  of  the  recent  socialists  with 
whom  it  is  best  worth  while  to  deal,  for  he  is  the  master 
of  them  all.  He  is  also  best  understood  in  his  writings 
on  Roman  taxation,  in  which  his  historical  text  and  his 
social  dogmas  throw  important  light  on  each  other.  He 
defines  liberty  to  be  a  share  in  the  power  of  the  state.^ 
He  then  defines  "free  trade,"  in  the  following  pages,  so 
as  to  make  it  cover  all  civil  liberty,  according  to  Anglo- 
American  institutions,  and  attributes  to  free  trade,  in 
this  sense,  no  less  harm  than  the  destruction  of  civil- 
ization. It  is  amusing  to  notice  how  this  denunciation 
of  free  trade,  which  it  would  have  been  so  satisfactory 
for  the  opponents  of  free  trade  to  quote,  has  been  fenced 
off  and  marked  with  the  strongest  kind  of  a  danger-signal, 
so  that  it  is  never  quoted  at  all,  because  it  is  an  assault 

1  Hildebrand's  "Jahrbiicher,"  V,  269. 


110       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

on  all  modern  liberalism  as  broad  as  the  Pope's  "Encyc- 
lical" of  1864.  In  fact,  this  parallelism  must  be  noted 
more  than  incidentally,  for  it  helps  to  show  what  I  here 
have  in  view:  that  all  forms  of  liberty  are  solidaire  with 
each  other;  and  all  forms  of  assault  on  liberty,  as  well 
the  revolutionist  and  socialistic  as  the  extreme  reaction- 
ary, are  also  solidaire  with  each  other.  A  criticism  of 
Rodbertus  is  a  task  which  I  reserve  for  another  occa- 
sion, but,  as  germane  to  my  present  subject  and  as 
illustrating  the  sort  of  dogma  which  shows  the  need  of 
re-analyzing  liberty,  I  ask  attention  to  the  following 
proposition:  "Moral  freedom  is  conditioned  on  historical 
necessity."  Some  of  our  contemporaries  take  that  sort 
of  proposition  as  the  profoundest  wisdom.  To  me  it  is 
oracular  in  more  senses  than  one.^ 

2.  From  a  large  collection  of  similar  cases  I  select 
the  following:  "Life  appears  to  the  Manchester  party 
to  run  its  course  under  the  form  of  a  parliamentary 
debate,  and  not  otherwise.  An  assertion  is  followed  by 
an  objection,  this  by  a  rejoinder,  and  so  on.  The  deci- 
sion of  the  majority  is  final."  The  view  here  stigmatized 
is  held  by  all  those  who  believe  in  government  by  delib- 
eration: "The  great  affair  in  this  world  is,  not  to  convince 
a  man's  intelligence,  or  to  increase  his  knowledge,  but  it 
is  at  least  equally  important  to  lead  his  will  and  to  con- 
quer it."  ^  The  writer  goes  on  to  argue  that,  if  men  are 
allowed  to  act  freely,  they  will  not  act  by  deliberation, 
but  selfishly.  There  he  leaves  the  matter,  apparently 
believing  that  he  has  routed  the  "Manchester  Schule," 
and  established  something  of  philosophical  or  practical 
importance.  He  must,  of  course,  assume  that  he  and 
his  friends  are  to  decide  when  others  and  their  friends 

»  Hildebrand's  "JahrbUcher,"  VIII,  420,  note. 

*  Von  Eichen  in  "Preuss.  JahrbUcher,"  1878,  p.  382. 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY?  Ill 

are   acting    selfishly,    and   ought    to   have    their    wills 
conquered. 

3.  To  take  another  citation  from  a  popular  writer: 
"Not    one    liberal    principle  but    is    admirable   in  the 
abstract;  yet  not  one  liberal  measure  that  has  not  worked 
terrible  mischief  in  our  time.    The  liberty  of  thought, 
for  instance;    who  dare  gainsay  it?    Yet  it  has  proved 
destructive  of  the  principle  of  religion,  without  which 
there  is  less  cohesion  among  men  than  among  a  herd  of 
swine.     The  liberty  of  settlement  and  circulation  has 
given  rise  to  the  pestilence  of  large  towns,  in  which  men 
congregate  and  live  together  on    terms  worse  than  a 
pack  of  wolves.     The  liberty  of  industry  has  reduced 
four-fifths  of  the  population  to  a  state  of  serfdom  more 
cruel  than  negro  slavery,  while  more  than  half  of  the 
remaining  population  is  engaged  in  a  perpetual  struggle, 
more  savage  than  the  intermittent  warfare  of  cannibals. 
Free  trade  among  nations  has  ruined,  first  individually, 
then  industrially,  then  financially,  and  finally  politically, 
prosperous  countries,  such  as  Turkey,  while  in  England 
it  has  destroyed,  not  only  agriculture,  but  all  those  ster- 
ling qualities  which  formerly  characterized  British  indus- 
try and  trade.  .  .  .  Parallel  to  the  deception  experienced 
by  the  modern  world  through  the  progress  of  industry, 
aided  by  discovery  and  invention,  have  come  down  on 
this  generation  the  fatal  effects  sprung  from  the  spread 
of  education.     While  thoughtless  or  superficial  writers 
pretend  to  find  in  education  the  remedy  of  all  social 
evils,  as  a  matter  of  fact  education  has  become  the  source 
of  a  vast  amount  of  human  suffering  in  modem  times, 
under  which  those  whose  education  is  their  only  patri- 
mony or  source  of  income  suffer  most."  ^    This  is  suffi- 

^  Karoly,    "The    Dilemmas  of   Labor  and  Ekiucation,"   London,    1884, 
Introd.,  p.  z. 


112       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ciently  explicit,  and  also  manifests  the  solidarity  of  all 
forms  of  liberty  and  modern  civilization.  Those  who 
attack  them  all  show  that  they  appreciate  the  truth  of 
things  a  great  deal  better  than  those  who  try  to  attack 
some  and  save  others. 

4.  Then  there  are  the  philosophers  of  the  newest 
school,  who,  seizing  upon  the  plain  fact  that  all  liberty 
is  subject  to  moral  restraints,  as  we  shall  presently  see, 
are  forcing  upon  us,  or  trying  to  force  upon  us,  by  legisla- 
tion, restraints  on  liberty  derived  from  altruistic  dogmas, 
and,  in  general,  under  the  high-sounding  name  of  ethics, 
are  assuming  a  charter  for  interference  wherever  they 
choose  to  allege  that  they  have  moral  grounds  for  believ- 
ing that  things  ought  to  be  as  they  want  them. 

5.  Finally,  the  anarchists,  taking  liberty  to  mean  that 
a  man  ought  to  be  a  law  unto  himself,  and  that  there 
should  be  no  other  law,  have  shown  from  another  side 
that  we  should  try  to  find  out  what  liberty  is. 

The  History  of  the  Dogma  of  Natural  Liberty 

The  history  of  the  dogma  of  the  natural  liberty  of  all 
men,  with  the  cognate  dogma  of  the  natural  equality  of 
all  men,  would  be  an  important  topic  for  exhaustive 
treatment  by  itself.  From  the  notes  which  I  have  made 
on  the  subject  I  condense  as  far  as  possible  the  following 
view  of  it. 

Slavery  in  the  classical  states  seems  to  have  rested  upon 
the  law  of  war,  that  the  vanquished  man  with  his  family 
and  all  his  property  fell  under  the  good  pleasure  of  the 
conqueror.  Xenophon  states  this  law  explicitly:  "The 
law  is  well  known  among  all  men  that,  when  a  state  goes 
to  war,  the  property  and  bodies  of  all  in  the  state  are  the 
property  of  the  captors.     You  will,  therefore,  not  pos- 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY?  US 

sess  wrongfully  whatever  you  get,  but,  if  you  permit 
them  to  retain  anything,  it  will  be  out  of  humanity."  ^ 
It  seems  that  the  reason  why  slaves  in  antiquity  so  univer- 
sally accepted  their  fate  was  that  they  understood  that 
such  was  the  fortune  of  war.  They  acquiesced  in  it  as 
according  to  the  rules  of  the  game.  The  earliest  writer 
whom  I  have  found  who  utters  the  dogma  of  liberty  is 
Philemon  (about  350  B.C.):  "No  one  by  nature  ever 
was  born  a  slave,  but  ill-fortune  enslaved  the  body."  ^ 
Aristotle  discusses  the  subject  in  the  third  and  fourth 
chapters  of  the  first  book  of  the  "Politics."  He  says 
that  some  held  that  slavery  was  against  nature.  Such 
persons,  whoever  they  were,  must  have  derived  their 
opinions  entirely  from  humane  impulse  and  poetic  enthu- 
siasm; Aristotle  was  not  of  that  tone  of  mind.  He  could 
not  find  in  history  any  example  of  a  state  which  had 
not  slavery,  and  when  he  examined  the  state  in  which  he 
lived  he  easily  saw  that  slavery  was  of  its  very  essence; 
he  therefore  held  that  slavery  was  a  natural  necessity. 
Such  it  was  in  the  sense  that  it  was  rooted  in  the  nature 
of  the  classical  state;  it  is  undeniable  that  the  classical 
state  could  not  have  grown  up  and  could  not  have  pro- 
duced its  form  of  civilization  without  slavery.  It  must 
also  be  recognized  as  a  fact  that  no  other  organization  of 
society  has  yet  shown  itself  capable  of  that  degree  of 
expansion  which  the  Roman  state  developed  by  means 
of  slavery.  The  mediaeval  state  broke  down  under  the 
first  expansive  requirement  which  was  made  upon  it. 
WTiether  the  modem  state,  based  on  natural  agents  and 
machinery,  is  capable  of  expansion  or  not,  is  yet  to  be 
proved.  There  seems  to  be  ample  reason  to  believe 
that  it  is,  unless  the  modern  world  votes  not  to  go  on; 

1  "Kyroped.,"  vii,  5,  73.    Cf.  "  Memorab.,"  ii,  2,  2,  and  Polybius,  ii,  58,  9. 
*  Frag.  39  in  Meineke,  "Com.  Graec.,"  iv,  S.  47. 


114       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

but,  if  the  modern  world  votes  to  go  on  and  not  be  afraid, 
it  can  only  do  so  by  virtue  of  education,  and  then  it  is 
subject  to  the  remonstrance  of  Mr.  Karoly  at  the  head 
of  this  article,  and  of  others  who  think  with  him.  To 
return  to  the  classical  state:  it  remains  only  to  observe 
that  slavery  was  likewise  the  fate  of  that  state  which, 
having  enabled  it  to  grow  up  to  immense  power  and 
achievement,  also  inevitably  carried  it  down  to  ruin 
and  disgrace. 

It  is  free  to  us  all  to  speculate  on  the  question  whether 
every  force  which  makes  high  expansion  possible  will 
not  also  bring  with  it  its  own  form  of  inevitable  destruc- 
tion or  decay.  Aristotle,  however,  proceeding  upon  the 
historical  method  and  upon  observation,  found  that  sla- 
very was  necessary  and  expedient  within  the  limits  of  the 
age  and  the  form  of  society  he  was  discussing. 

Fuller  expression  of  the  dogma  of  natural  liberty  comes 
only  with  the  Christian  era.  Dio  Chrysostom,  at  the 
end  of  the  first  century,  expresses  himself  in  favor  of  it, 
but  his  declaration  is  incidental  and  can  be  taken  only 
as  rhetorical.^  It  is  among  the  Christian  writers  that  it 
first  finds  distinct  and  enthusiastic  expression.  With 
them  it  is  rather  an  inference  from  fundamental  doc- 
trines of  the  faith  than  an  actual  article  of  the  creed, 
although  they  quote  texts  freely  in  support  of  it.  The 
doctrines  of  Christianity  are  undoubtedly  favorable  to 
it,  and  the  inference  was  direct  and  easy.  Tertullian 
(about  200  A.D.),  addressing  heathen,  declares:  "We 
are  your  brothers  by  the  right  of  one  mother  —  Nature."  ^ 

It  was  not  confined  to  Christians,  however;  it  is  very 
probable  that  it  may  have  entered  into  the  Stoic  phi- 
losophy in  some  vague  way.  We  find  it  in  the  lawyers 
of  the  third  century.     Ulpian  says:   "In  civil  law,  slaves 

1  "Orat.,"  vii,  138. 

2  "Apologet.  ad  Gent.,"  c.  39. 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY?  115 

are  considered  null.  Not,  however,  by  natural  right; 
because,  as  regards  natural  right,  all  men  are  equal."  ^ 
And  Florentinus:  "Liberty  is  the  natural  faculty  of 
that  which  it  is  permitted  to  any  one  to  do,  unless  some- 
thing has  been  prohibited  to  him  by  force  or  law.  Sla- 
very is  an  institution  of  the  law  of  nations,  by  which  any 
one  is  subjected  to  the  rule  of  another,  against  nature. 
Servi  are  so  called  because  military  commanders  are 
wont  to  sell  captives,  and  so  to  preserve  (servare)  them 
and  not  kill  them."  ^  The  doctrine,  therefore,  gets  into 
the  Institutes  of  Justinian:  ^  "Slavery  is  the  institute  of 
the  law  of  nations  by  which  a  human  being  is  subjected 
to  another's  control  against  nature."  These  proposi- 
tions in  the  law,  remained,  however,  entirely  barren,  and 
were  not  different  from  the  academical  utterances  of  the 
philosophers.  It  was  the  voice  of  reason  and  conscience 
recognizing  a  grand  abstract  doctrine,  but  without  power 
to  solve  the  social  problems  which  would  arise  if  that 
doctrine  should  be  in  any  measure  admitted  into  the 
existing  order.  The  Christians  alone  seem  to  carry  on 
the  doctrine  as  something  more  than  a  pious  hope,  some- 
thing not  more  distant  than  any  other  feature  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  and  easily  realizable  in  that  king- 
dom. The  vague  elements  of  social  and  political  innova- 
tion in  the  revolt  of  the  Donatists  and  the  Bagaudes 
bear  witness  to  the  extent  to  which  some  such  doctrines 
had  been  popularized.  The  latter  had  a  very  naive  defi- 
nition of  natural  rights,  and,  on  the  whole,  as  good  a 
one  as  has  ever  been  given.  "Natural  rights  are  bom 
with  us,  about  which  nothing  is  said."  ^ 

1  "Digest,"  i,  17,  32.  *  "Digest,"  v,  4.  »  I,  tit.  iii,  2. 

*  See  Jung,  in  Sybel's  "  Zeitschrif t,"  xlii,  65.  He  gives  no  authority  for  the 
definition  of  natural  rights.  Another  topic  which  might  be  investigated  with 
great  advantage  to  social  science  is  the  history  of  popular  revolts,  with  espe- 
cial attention  to  their  common  elements  of  political  and  social  dogma. 


116       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

By  the  seventh  century,  the  churchmen  had  made  the 
doctrine  of  natural  liberty  one  of  the  tenets  of  the 
Church.  Gregory  the  Great  writes:  "Since  our  Re- 
deemer, Creator  of  all  c;reatures,  deigned  to  put  on  human 
form,  in  order  by  His  divine  grace  to  break  the  bonds  of 
the  servitude  by  which  we  were  held  as  captives,  that  He 
might  restore  us  to  our  ancient  liberty,  it  is  fitting  and 
advantageous  that  those  whom  Nature  has  made  free, 
and  v/hom  the  law  of  nations  has  made  subject  to  the 
yoke  of  servitude,  should  be  restored,  by  enfranchise- 
ment, to  that  liberty  in  which  they  were  born."  ^  This 
passage  became  authoritative  for  the  Middle  Ages,  as 
well  for  the  point  of  view  of  the  doctrine  and  the  sanc- 
tion of  it,  as  for  its  substance.  It  is  a  familiar  fact  that 
the  current  reason  then  alleged  for  enfranchisements 
was  one's  soul's  health  in  the  realization  of  a  high  Chris- 
tian ideal.  About  825  Bishop  Jonas,  of  Orleans,  asks: 
"Why  are  not  master  and  slave,  rich  and  poor,  equal  by 
nature,  since  they  have  one  Lord  in  heaven,  who  is  not 
a  respecter  of  persons?  .  .  .  The  powerful  and  rich, 
taught  by  these  (church  fathers),  recognize  their  slaves 
and  the  poor  as  equal  to  themselves  by  nature."  ^  In 
the  twelfth  century  Bishop  Ivo  writes:  "If  we  consult 
the  institutes  of  God,  and  the  law  of  nature,  in  which 
there  is  neither  bond  nor  free,"  etc'  In  the  thirteenth 
century  the  doctrine  appears  in  Bracton.^  When  describ- 
ing the  classes  of  men  as  free,  villains,  serfs,  etc.,  he  says: 
"Before  God,  there  is  no  acceptance  of  men  as  free,  or 
of  men  as  slaves."  Here  we  see  the  doctrine,  such  as 
the  churchmen  had  been  elaborating  it,  with  its  scrip- 
tural warrant,  pass  into  the  English  common  law. 

1  Epistles,  book  vi,  ep.  12;   77  Migne,  803. 

*  "De  Instit.  Laic,"  ii,  22;   106  Migne,  213.     He  quotes  Coloss.  iv,  1. 

»  Epist.  221;   162  Migne,  226.    *  Book  i,  ch.  8,  ed.  Twiss,  1878. 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY?  117 

In  the  fourteenth  century  the  kings  of  France,  in 
enfranchising  the  communes  on  the  domains,  repeatedly 
allege  this  doctrine  as  one  of  their  motives.^  Un- 
doubtedly, the  real  motive  was  that  more  revenue  could 
be  got  from  them  by  taxing  them  as  communes  than  by 
exacting  feudal  dues  from  the  members  as  serfs,  but  it 
all  help>ed  to  spread  the  doctrine  as  an  idea  of  what  would 
be  "right." 

This  review  now  shows  that  the  doctrine  of  liberty 
and  equality  by  "nature,"  by  birth,  and  by  natural 
right  was  not  by  any  means  an  eighteenth-century  dogma. 
It  had  been  growing  and  spreading  for  eighteen  hundred 
years.  It  had  begun  in  skepticism  about  the  fairness 
of  slavery;  it  could  not  begin  with  anything  else.  It 
went  on  until  it  became  a  philosophical  notion  of  liberty, 
meaning  the  natural  right  of  every  one  to  pursue  happi- 
ness in  his  own  way,  and  according  to  his  own  ideal  of 
it;   it  could  not  stop  short  of  that. 

This  dogma  did  not  emancipate  slaves  or  serfs.  Dur- 
ing a  thousand  years,  from  the  sixth  to  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  peasants  of  France  and  England  passed 
through  the  stages  of  slavery,  serfdom,  villainage,  and 
compulsory  settlement,^  by  persistent  struggles  of  their 

*  The  originals  of  these  documents  are  not  accessible  to  me.  One  of 
Philippe  le  Bel  is  quoted:  "Seeing  that  every  creature  who  is  formed  in  the 
image  of  our  Lord  ought,  in  general,  to  be  free  by  natural  right,"  etc.;  and  one 
by  Louis  le  Hutin:  "Seeing  that,  by  the  right  of  nature,  each  one  ought  to  be 
bom  free,"  etc. 

'  In  September,  1860,  the  correspondent  of  the  "Augsbilrger  Allgemeine 
Zeitung"  wrote  from  New  York  that  the  correct  solution  of  the  American  sla- 
very question  would  be  to  determine  upon  five  steps:  1,  forbid  separation  of 
negro  families;  2,  bind  the  slaves  to  the  soil;  3,  change  them  into  serfs;  4, 
change  serfdom  to  villainage;  5,  abolish  the  last.  (Quoted  by  Rodbertus, 
with  approval,  in  Hildebrand's  "  Jahrbticher,"  II,  266.)  This  is  as  refined  and 
beautiful  an  application  of  the  "teachings  of  history"  as  could  possibly  have 
been  made  to  that  case,  yet  it  requires  very  little  knowledge  of  the  case  as  it 


118       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

own,  aided  by  economic  improvements  and  political  vicis- 
situdes, but  the  dogma  of  natural  rights  was  aiding  them 
all  the  time,  by  undermining  the  institutions  of  the  law, 
and  by  destroying  the  confidence  of  the  ruling  classes, 
so  far  as  they  were  religious  and  humane,  in  the  justice 
of  the  actual  situation. 

And  so  the  most  important  fact  in  regard  to  the  his- 
tory of  the  dogma  of  natural  liberty  is  that  that  dogma 
has  never  had  an  historical  foundation,  but  is  the  purest 
example  that  could  be  brought  forward  of  an  out-and-out 
a  priori  dogma;  that  this  dogma,  among  the  most  favored 
nations,  helped  and  sustained  the  emancipation  of  the 
masses;  and  that,  by  contagion,  it  has,  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  spread  liberty  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth.  At  no  time  during  this  movement  could  any- 
body, by  looking  backward  to  history,  have  found  any 
warrant  for  the  next  step  to  be  made  in  advance;  on 
the  contrary,  he  would  have  found  only  warning  not  to 
do  anything.  Such  must  always  be  the  effect  of  any 
appeal  to  history,  as  to  what  we  ought  to  do  or  as  to 
what  ought  to  be.  It  is  a  strange  situation  in  which 
we  find  ourselves,  when  those  of  us  who  are  most 
unfriendly  to  "metaphysics"  and  have  most  enthu- 
siastic devotion  to  history,  find  ourselves  compelled  to 
remonstrate  against  half -educated  denial  of  what  specu- 
lative philosophy  has  done  and  may  do  for  mankind,  and 
also  to  remonstrate  against  the  cant  of  an  historical 
method  which  makes  both  history  and  method  ridicu- 
lous. In  the  crisis  of  a  modern  discussion  to  go  ofiP  and 
begin  to  talk  about  history  is  the  last  and  best  advice 
of  reaction  and  obscurantism. 

Let  it  be  noticed  also  that  from  our  present  standpoint 

really  stood  to  see  that  this  program  was  as  unpractical  and  pedantic  as  the 
wildest  proposition  which  could  have  been  made  by  an  a  priori  philosopher. 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY  ?  119 

this  doctrine  has  lost  nearly  all  the  arguments  which 
were  ever  brought  to  its  support.  The  notion  of  nat- 
ural rights  is  not  now  held  by  anybody  in  the  sense  of 
reference  to  some  original  historical  state  of  the  human 
race.  The  biblical  scholars  would  scarcely  avow  the 
exegesis  by  which  the  doctrine  was  got  out  of  the  Scrip- 
tures; the  dogma  to-day  does  not  stand  on  the  ground 
of  an  inference  from  any  religious  doctrine.  The  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  instead  of  supp>orting  the  natural 
equality  of  all  men,  would  give  a  demonstration  of  their 
inequality;  and  the  doctrine  of  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence would  divorce  liberty  and  equality  as  incompatible 
with  each  other.  The  doctrine,  thus  stripped  of  all  the 
props  which  have  been  brought  to  its  supp>ort,  would 
remain  only  a  poetic  inspiration;  but,  if  all  this  is  ad- 
mitted, if  its  historic  legitimacy  is  all  taken  away,  does 
that  detract  anything  from  the  beneficence  of  the  doc- 
trine in  history,  render  invalid  a  single  institution  which 
rests  upon  it  now.''  Shall  we  any  of  us  return  into  serf- 
dom, because  it  is  proved  that  our  ancestors  were  eman- 
cipated under  a  delusion  or  a  sup>erstition? 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  when  we  turn  to  the  present 
and  the  future  that  the  rectification  of  the  dogma 
becomes  all-important.  The  anarchists  of  to-day  have 
pushed  the  old  dogma  of  natural  liberty  to  the  extrem- 
est  form  of  abstract  deduction,  and  they  propose  to  make 
it  a  program  of  action.  They  therefore  make  of  it  a 
principle  of  endless  revolution.  If,  however,  the  basis 
on  which  it  once  rested  is  gone,  it  is  impossible  that  we 
should  hold  and  use  it  any  more.  With  our  present 
knowledge  of  history,  we  know  that  no  men  on  earth 
ever  have  had  liberty  in  the  sense  of  unrestrainedness 
of  action.  The  very  conception  is  elusive;  it  is  impos- 
sible to  reduce  it  to  such  form  that  it  could  be  verified, 


120       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

for  the  reason  that  it  is  non-human,  non-earthly;  it  never 
could  exist  on  this  earth  and  among  these  men.  The 
notion  of  liberty,  and  of  the  things  to  which  it  pertains, 
has  changed,  even  in  modem  history,  from  age  to  age. 
Never  in  the  history  of  the  world  has  military  service 
weighed  on  large  bodies  of  men  as  it  does  now  on  the 
men  of  the  European  continent.  It  is  doubtful  if  it 
would  ever  have  been  endured;  yet  the  present  victims 
of  it  do  not  appear  to  consider  it  inconsistent  with  lib- 
erty. Sumptuary  laws  about  dress  would  raise  a  riot 
in  any  American  state;  a  prohibitory  law  would  have 
raised  a  riot  among  people  who  did  not  directly  resist 
sumptuary  laws.  A  civil  officer  in  France,  before  the 
Revolution,  who  had  bought  or  inherited  his  office,  had 
a  degree  of  independence  and  liberty  in  it  which  the 
nineteenth-century  official  never  dreams  of;  the  more 
this  nineteenth-century  civil  and  political  liberty  is  per- 
fected, the  more  it  appears,  on  the  contrary,  that  under 
it  an  official  has  freedom  of  opinion  and  independence 
of  action  only  at  the  peril  of  his  livelihood. 

So  far  our  task  has  been  comparatively  easy.  It 
requires  only  industry  to  follow  out  the  history  of  what 
men  have  thought  about  anything.  To  find  out  how 
things  have  actually  taken  place  in  the  life  of  the  human 
race  is  a  task  which  can  never  be  more  than  approxi- 
mately performed,  in  spite  of  all  our  talk  about  history. 
To  interpret  the  history  is  still  another  task,  of  a  much 
more  difficult  character.^ 

^  The  Emperor  Paul,  of  Russia,  showed  what  may  be  done  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  history.  When  he  heard  of  the  excesses  of  the  French  Revolution, 
he  turned  to  his  sons  and  said,  "Now  you  see  that  it  is  necessary  to  treat  men 
like  dogs."  (Masson,  "M^moires  sur  la  Russie,"  219).  It  is  true  that  he  was 
crazy,  but  we  all  have  oiu*  personal  limitations,  which  are  most  important  when 
we  undertake  interpretation. 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY?  121 

Liberty  in  History  and  Institutions 

We  are  blinded  by  the  common  use  of  language  to  the 
fact  that  all  social  actions  are  attended  by  reactions. 
To  take  the  commonest  and  often  noticed  instance,  we 
talk  of  buyers  and  sellers  as  if  they  were  independent  of 
each  other;  we  call  those  who  have  money  buyers,  and 
those  who  have  goods  sellers.  We  find,  however,  that 
no  transaction  can  be  correctly  understood  until  we 
regard  it  as  an  exchange,  having  two  parts,  an  action  and 
a  reaction,  equal  and  opposite.  In  the  language  of  the 
market,  also,  we  speak  of  being  long  or  short  of  the  mar- 
ket, but  every  one  who  has  either  money  or  goods  is  in 
the  market,  and  is  both  long  and  short  of  it  all  the  time. 
He  is  either  long  of  goods  and  short  of  money,  or  long  of 
money  and  short  of  goods.  The  philosophy  of  the  mar- 
ket cannot  be  understood  unless  we  study  it  from  this 
point  of  view. 

The  fallacy  of  a  great  many  doctrines  in  social  science, 
and  the  philosophy  of  a  great  many  errors  in  social  pol- 
icy, is  that  they  divorce  the  action  from  the  reaction. 
If  there  is  not  a  reaction  with  equivalence  and  equi- 
librium, then  there  is  an  expenditure  from  one  side  toward 
the  other,  a  drain  of  force  from  one  side  and  an  accumu- 
lation of  it  at  another,  until  there  come  a  crisis  and  a 
redistribution.  When  the  return  and  equivalence  are 
suspended,  there  is  a  necessary  continuance  of  the  move- 
ment, in  the  tendency  toward  a  stable  equilibrium  of 
another  kind,  which  would  come  about  when  all  the  force 
had  been  transferred.  For  instance,  you  give  good  schools 
for  less  than  their  market  value;  you  must,  then,  give 
free  schools;  then  you  must  give  free  books  and  station- 
ery;   then  "hot  breakfasts,"  *  and  so  on  in  succession. 

1  "The  Economist,"  1889,  p.  430. 


122       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

The  fact  that  one  thing  has  been  given  is  made  an  argu- 
ment for  more.  You  are  told:  You  have  established 
free  schools;  "why  should  not  you"  do  whatever  else 
the  proponent  favors?  The  argument  that  because  you 
have  given  a  man  one  thing  you  ought  to  give  him  an- 
other is  not  good  in  logic,  but  it  is  intensely  strong  in 
human  nature  and  in  history.  The  saying  is  attributed 
to  Danton,  the  revolutionist:  "The  revolution  came,  and 
I  and  all  those  like  me  plunged  into  it.  The  ancien 
regime  had  given  us  a  good  education  without  opening 
an  outlet  for  our  talents."  The  great  fallacy  of  social- 
istic schemes  is  that  they  break  off  the  social  reaction. 
A  man  is  to  have  something  simply  because  he  is  a  man 
—  that  is,  simply  because  he  is  here.  He  is  not  to  be 
called  upon  to  render  any  return  for  it,  except  to  stay. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  tax-payer,  who  has  provided  all 
there  is,  is  not  on  that  account  to  be  entitled  to  a  recom- 
pense of  any  kind.  He  has  only  incurred  a  new  liabil- 
ity, viz.,  to  do  the  next  thing  which  is  demanded  of 
him.  The  only  stable  equilibrium  under  this  system 
would  be  universal  contentment.  But  bounty  does  not 
lead  to  contentment,  and  cannot,  until  the  recipient  has 
everything  for  nothing.  The  movement,  therefore,  runs 
to  a  crisis,  a  redistribution,  a  recommencement,  and  the 
further  it  goes,  the  nearer  it  approaches  anarchy,  im- 
poverishment, and  barbarism. 

At  various  times,  in  primitive  society,  in  ancient 
Egypt,  and  in  the  Roman  Empire,  when  women  have 
possessed  the  forces  which  were  efficient  in  the  society, 
they  have  had  dominion  over  men.  They  abused  the 
power  when  they  had  it,  too.  At  other  times  the  subjec- 
tion of  women  has  been  due  to  the  fact  that  they  needed 
protection;  they  did  not  possess  the  forces  which,  at  the 
time,  were  required  for  self-defense  in  the  society.     But 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY?  123 

since  they  accepted  protection,  they  could  not  be  free; 
when  they  fell  into  dependence,  they  could  not  be  in- 
dependent. If  they  could  claim  protection  and  at  the 
same  time  dominion,  they  would  be  privileged;  and  any 
one  who  enjoys  privilege  which  some  one  else  has  to 
furnish,  is  of  course  superior.  Hence,  there  are  three 
positions  only  in  social  relations;  servitude  with  inferior- 
ity, privilege  with  superiority,  and  a  middle  state  of 
neither,  with  equality. 

Peasant  proprietors  turn  into  colons  and  serfs  through 
misery.^  They  abandon  personal  liberty  in  order  to  get 
protection,  and  they  accept  servitude  to  get  security, 
because  they  find  that  they  have  not  enough  of  the  force 
which  prevails  in  the  society  to  defend  themselves.  Their 
lords  maintain  superiority  and  exact  for  themselves 
social  privilege.  Such  was  the  course  of  things  at  the 
downfall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  When  things  began  to 
improve  in  western  Europe,  the  slave  thought  that  it 
was  comparative  freedom  when  he  was  bound  to  the  soil, 
because  his  family  could  not  be  separated,  and  he  could 
not  be  removed  from  his  home.  A  villain,  however, 
would  have  thought  it  slavery  to  be  reduced  to  the  status 
of  the  serf,  with  unlimited  servitudes  to  render.  The 
serf,  in  his  turn,  thought  it  immeasurable  gain  to  get 
his  servitudes  made  definite,  although  a  free  man  would 
have  thought  it  slavery  to  be  reduced  to  villainage.  A 
villain  could  not  go  if  he  wanted  to,  but  he  could  not 
be  evicted  if  any  one  wanted  to  send  him  away.  A 
free  man  can  go  if  he  wants  to,  and  may  be  evicted  if 
the  other  party  chooses.  At  what  point  does  the  ser- 
vitude of  the  villain,  who  must  stay  and  work  and  pay 

^  This  is  a  disputed  point,  on  which  a  great  deal  has  been  written,  with 
very  great  divergence  of  opinion.  The  above  seems  to  me  to  be  the  best 
opinion. 


124       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

feudal  dues,  turn  into  the  blessing  of  the  free  tenant, 
who  has  fixity  of  tenure,  but  works  and  enjoys  subject 
to  taxes?  Evidently  it  is  at  that  point  where  the  rights 
and  benefits  of  holding  and  using  become  equal  to  the 
burdens  and  duties  of  taking  and  using  —  always  with 
reference  to  the  comparative  value  of  other  chances  which 
present  themselves.  If  a  villain  wants  to  stay,  it  is  a 
privilege  that  no  one  can  evict  him;  if  he  wants  to  go, 
it  is  a  servitude  that  some  one  can  retain  him.  If  the 
landlord  wants  to  force  tenants  to  stay  and  till  his  land, 
it  is  a  privilege  for  him  to  be  able  to  force  them  to  stay;* 
if  the  landlord  wants  to  turn  his  land  to  other  use,  it  is 
a  servitude  for  him  if  he  cannot  evict  his  tenants.  The 
modern  peasant  proprietor  is  one  in  whose  status  all 
these  privileges  and  servitudes  have  met,  coalesced, 
and  disappeared,  so  that  they  are  all  summed  up  in  the 
question  whether  his  land  is  worth  holding  and  tilling, 
subject  to  the  taxes  which  must  be  paid  on  it. 

In  all  these  variations  and  mutations  of  social  status 
and  of  the  relations  of  classes,  which  we  might  pursue 
with  any  amount  of  detail  through  the  history  of  the 
last  fifteen  hundred  years,  where  is  there  any  such  thing 
as  personal  liberty  of  the  sort  which  means  doing  as  one 
likes.''  None  have  had  it  but  those  who  were  privileged 
—  that  is  to  say,  it  has  lain  entirely  outside  of  civil  lib- 
erty. It  has  had  the  form  of  an  artificial  social  monop- 
oly, and  the  fact  has  come  out  distinctly  that  liberty  to 
do  as  you  please  in  this  world  is  only  possible  as  a  mo- 
nopoly, but  that  it  is  the  most  valuable  monopoly  in  the 
world,  provided  you  can  get  it  as  a  monopoly.  You 
would  realize  it  when  you  got  into  the  position  of  Nero, 
or  Louis  XIV,  or  Catharine  II. 

*  It  was  so  in  Denmark  in  the  last  century.  See  Falbe-Hansen,  "Stavns- 
baands-L0sningen,"  and  the  "Nation,"  1889,  p.  123. 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY?  125 

We  may  gather  some  other  cases  in  point. 

A  man  who  expects  to  go  to  the  alms-house  in  his  old 
age  may  regard  a  law  of  settlement  as  his  patent  of  secu- 
rity, because  it  defines  and  secures  his  place  of  refuge. 
A  man  who  is  in  the  same  status,  but  who  is  determined 
to  better  his  condition  by  energy  and  enterprise,  and  tries 
to  move,  finds  the  law  of  settlement  a  curse,  which  may 
hold  him  down  and  force  him  to  become  a  pauper. 

If  you  are  not  able  to  make  your  own  way  in  the 
world,  you  want  to  be  protected  by  status;  if  you  have 
ambition  and  ability  to  make  a  career  for  yourself,  you 
find  that  status  holds  you  down.  In  the  former  case  it 
holds  you  up,  or  keeps  you  from  falling;  in  the  latter  it 
holds  you  down,  or  keeps  you  from  rising,  on  the  whole, 
therefore,  it  keeps  the  society  stagnant.  If  numbers  do 
not  increase  very  much,  there  may  not  be  much  suffer- 
ing; if  numbers  do  increase,  there  will  be  mendicancy, 
pauperism,  vagabondage,  and  brigandage.  It  is  a  matter 
of  great  surprise  that  so  little  investigation  has  been  ex- 
pended on  the  vagabondage  of  the  Middle  Ages;  the 
students  of  that  p>eriod  have  kept  their  attention  on 
those  who  were  inside  of  its  institutions,  but  the  test  of 
the  mediaeval  system  is  to  be  found  in  a  study  of  those 
who  were  kept  out  of  its  institutions. 

If  it  is  a  mark  of  a  free  man,  as  in  early  Rome,  to  do 
military  duty,  every  one  may  regard  that  function  as  a 
right  or  privilege  rather  than  as  a  burden  or  duty;  it 
may  carry  with  it  privileges  of  citizenship  which  make 
it  worth  more  than  it  costs.  If,  however,  the  privileges 
of  citizenship  are  lost  and  the  burden  of  military  duty 
increases,  men  will,  as  in  the  Dark  Ages,  sacrifice  per- 
sonal liberty  as  well  as  civil  liberty  in  order  to  get  rid  of 
military  duty.  If,  as  in  Russia,  at  least  formerly,  the 
privileges  of  citizenship  are  nil,  and  the  burdens  of  mili- 


126       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

tary  duty  very  heavy,  to  be  taken  as  a  soldier  is  like 
incurring  a  capital  sentence. 

If  a  man  enjoys  a  position  of  advantage  compared 
with  others,  he  is  anxious  to  entail  it  on  his  children; 
if  he  is  under  shame  or  disadvantage,  he  is  anxious  to 
break  the  entail.  One  who  is  born  of  a  duke  is  anxious 
to  maintain  hereditariness,  but  one  who  is  born  of  the 
hangman  rebels  against  it.  The  two  are  part  of  one  sys- 
tem, and,  in  the  long  run,  must  stand  or  fall  together. 

He  who  is  not  able  to  attain  to  his  standards  of  hap- 
piness by  his  own  efforts  is  one  of  the  "weak;"  he  does 
not  want  to  be  let  alone;  he  wants  some  one  to  come  and 
help  him.  He  who  is  confident  of  his  own  power  to 
accomplish  his  own  purposes,  wants  to  be  let  alone;  he 
is  "strong"  and  resents  interference.  In  the  long  run, 
however,  he  who  may  be  called  upon  for  aid  in  the  for- 
mer case  will  insist  on  his  right  to  interfere  in  the  latter 
case,  and  he  who  claims  freedom  in  the  latter  case  will 
find  that  he  must  bear  his  own  burdens  in  the  former. 
Any  other  course  would  simply  lead  to  a  new  system  of 
privilege  and  servitude,  for  he  who  can  choose  his  own 
ends  and  make  somebody  else  help  him  attain  them  has 
realized  privilege  in  its  old  and  ever-abiding  sense. 

Privilege  and  servitude,  therefore,  when  we  classify 
them  with  reference  to  our  present  study,  are  the  poles 
between  which  all  forms  of  social  status  lie.  Rights  lie 
on  the  side  toward  privilege;  duties  lie  on  the  side  toward 
servitude.  Rights  and  duties,  however,  are  not  sepa- 
rated by  any  gulf  nor  even  by  a  line.  They  overlap  each 
other.  Not  only  are  they  parallel  and  connected  by 
the  social  reaction,  but  also  to  different  men  or  at  dif- 
ferent times  the  same  thing  often  presents  itself  either 
as  a  right  or  a  duty,  e.g.,  military  duty.  Somewhere 
between,  however,  lies  the  middle  point  or  neutral  point, 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY  ?  127 

where  there  is  neither  privilege  nor  servitude,  but  where 
the  rights  and  duties  are  in  equilibrium,  and  that  status 
is  civil  liberty  in  the  only  sense  in  which  it  is  thinkable 
or  realizable  in  laws,  institutions,  and  history. 

We  have  seen  cases  above  in  which  the  same  men  were 
under  privilege  and  servitude  at  the  same  time,  having 
accepted  one  as  the  price  of  the  other.  We  have  also 
seen  cases  in  which  the  privilege  of  some  involved  the 
servitude  of  others.  The  former  class  of  cases  have 
been  those  which  have  had  the  most  unhappy  issue,  for 
the  privileges  have  often  faded  with  time  and  the  ser- 
vitudes have  been  intensified.  It  is  a  bargain  which  a 
rational  being  can  rarely  afford  to  make,  to  incur  ser- 
vitude in  the  hope  of  privilege.  Herein  lies  the  curse  of 
socialistic  schemes  when  viewed  from  the  side  of  the 
supposed  beneficiary  —  they  are  a  bait  to  defraud  him  of 
his  liberty.  I  do  not  see  how  the  German  accident  and 
workman's  insurance  can  fail  to  act  as  a  law  of  settlement, 
thereby,  under  a  pretense  of  offering  the  workman  se- 
curity, robbing  him  of  his  best  chance  of  improving  his 
position.  Still,  the  cases  where  a  man  incurs  his  own 
servitude  for  the  sake  of  his  own  privilege  are  not  as  bad 
in  some  respects  as  those  in  which  some  have  privileges 
for  which  others  bear  servitudes. 

The  modern  jural  state,  at  least  of  the  Anglo-Amer- 
ican type,  by  its  hostility  to  privileges  and  servitudes, 
if  not  by  direct  analytical  definition  of  its  purpose,  aims 
to  realize  the  above  definition  of  liberty.  It  is  the  one 
which  fills  our  institutions  at  their  best,  and  the  one 
which  forms  the  stem  of  our  best  civil  and  social  ideals. 
If  all  privileges  and  all  servitudes  are  abolished,  the 
individual  finds  that  there  are  no  prescriptions  left 
either  to  lift  him  up  or  to  hold  him  down.  He  simply 
has  all  his  chances  left  open  that  he  may  make  out  of 


128       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

himself  all  there  is  in  him.  This  is  individualism  and 
atomism.^  There  is  absolutely  no  escape  from  it  except 
back  into  the  system  of  privileges  and  servitudes.  The 
doctrine  of  the  former  is  that  a  man  has  a  right  to  make 
the  most  of  himself  to  attain  the  ends  of  his  existence; 
the  doctrine  of  the  latter  is  that  a  man  has  a  right  to 
whatever  he  needs  to  attain  the  ends  of  his  existence. 
If  the  latter  is  true,  then  any  one  who  is  bound  to  fur- 
nish him  what  he  needs  is  under  servitude  to  him. 

The  fact,  however,  is  rapidly  making  itself  felt  that 
this  civil  liberty  of  the  modern  type  is  a  high  and  costly 
thing.  A  generation  which  has  been  glorying  in  it  and 
heralding  it  to  all  the  world  as  a  boon  and  a  blessing, 
to  be  had  for  the  taking  and  to  be  enjoyed  for  nothing,, 
begins  to  cry  out  that  it  is  too  great  for  them;  that  they 
cannot  attain  to  it  nor  even  bear  it;  that  to  be  a  free 
man  means  to  come  up  to  the  standard  and  be  it;  and 
that  it  is  asking  too  much  of  human  nature.  They 
want  somebody  to  come  and  help  them  to  be  free.  It 
has  always  been  so.  Men  have  failed  of  freedom  not 
because  kings,  nobles,  or  priests  enslaved  them,  but 
because  liberty  was  too  high  and  great  for  them.  They 
would  not  rise  to  it;  they  would  submit  to  any  servi- 
tude rather;   therefore  they  get  servitude. 

The  strain  of  liberty  is  in  the  demand  which  it  makes 
on  the  whole  mass  of  the  people  for  perpetual  activity  of 
reason  and  conscience  to  re-examine  rights  and  duties, 
and  to  readjust  their  equilibrium.  Civil  liberty  is  not 
a  scientific  fact.  It  is  not  in  the  order  of  nature.  It  is 
not  positive  and  objective;    therefore  it  is  not  capable 

*  The  writer  of  an  otherwise  good  book  (Rauber,  "  Urgeschichte  des  Men- 
schen,"  ii,  291,  fif.)  indulges  in  an  extraordinary  screed  against  the  atomists. 
He  reaches  the  conclusion  that  fate  is  the  state.  To  me  it  seems  that  fate  b. 
one's  father  and  mother. 


WHAT  IS  CIVIL  LIBERTY?  129 

of  constant  and  easy  verification.  It  is  historical  and 
institutional.  That  means,  however,  that  it  is  in  the 
flux  and  change  of  civilization,  wherefore  the  reason  and 
conscience  of  men  are  kept  in  constant  activity  to  re- 
examine accepted  principles,  and  to  reach  new  and  more 
nearly  correct  solution  of  problems.  On  account  of 
this  activity,  institutions  are  modified  constantly,  and 
the  concrete  contents  of  the  public  creed,  about  rights 
and  duties,  are  undergoing  constant  change.  It  does 
not  appear  that  this  can  ever  be  otherwise.  There  is  an 
assumption  that  we  can  attain  to  social  stability  by  find- 
ing out  the  right  "form  of  government,"  or  the  correct 
**  social  system,"  but  no  ground  for  such  a  notion  can  be 
found  in  philosophy  or  history.^  The  equilibrium  of  rights 
and  duties  constitutes  the  terms  on  which  the  struggle 
for  existence  is  carried  on  in  a  given  society,  after  the 
reason  and  conscience  of  the  community  have  pronounced 
judgment  on  those  terms.  The  very  highest  conception 
of  the  state  is  that  it  is  an  organization  for  bringing  that 
judgment  to  an  expression  in  the  constitution  and  laws. 
A  state,  therefore,  is  good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  accord- 
ing to  the  directness  and  correctness  with  which  it  brings 
to  an  expression  the  best  reason  and  conscience  of  the 
people,  and  embodies  their  judgment  in  institutions 
and  laws.  The  state,  therefore,  lives  by  deliberation 
and  discussion,  and  by  tacit  or  overt  expressions  of  the 
major  opinion. 

The  fact  that  laws  and  institutions  must  be  constantly 
remolded  in  the  progress  of  time  by  the  active  reason 

^  One  of  the  most  remarkable  signs  of  the  confusion  reigning  in  social  science 
is  the  fact  that  current  discussion  is  marked  by  an  attempt  to  force  positive 
character  upon  the  doctrines  of  the  state,  or  to  make  a  science  of  "political 
science,"  which  never  can  be  anything  but  historical  and  institutional;  and 
at  the  same  time  to  deny  scientific  character  to  economic  laws  and  to  insist 
that  they  are  historical  and  institutional. 


130       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  conscience  of  the  people,  is  what  has  probably  given 
rise  to  the  notion,  just  now  so  popular,  that  ethical  con- 
siderations do,  or  ought  to,  regulate  legislation  and 
social  relations.  The  doctrine,  however,  that  institu- 
tions must  in  the  course  of  generations  slowly  change 
to  conform  to  social  conditions  and  social  forces,  accord- 
ing to  the  mature  convictions  of  great  masses  of  men, 
is  a  very  different  thing  from  the  notion  that  rights  and 
duties  should  be  at  the  sport  of  all  the  crude  notions 
which,  from  time  to  time,  may  gain  the  assent  of  even 
an  important  group  of  the  population. 

Among  the  most  important  tides  of  thought  at  the 
present  time  which  are  hostile  to  liberty  are  socialism 
which  always  has  to  assume  a  controlling  organ  to  over- 
rule personal  liberty  and  set  aside  civil  liberty,  in  order 
to  bring  about  what  the  socialist  authorities  have  de- 
cided shall  be  done;  nationalism,  really  a  cognate  of 
socialism,  with  opposition  to  emigration  or  immigra- 
tion; state  absolutism,  which,  in  its  newest  form,  insists 
that  the  individual  exists  for  the  state;  and  altruism, 
which,  when  put  forward  as  an  absolute  dogma,  is  as 
anti-social  as  selfishness.  All  these  are  only  the  latest 
forms  of  the  devices  by  which  some  men  live  at  the  ex- 
pense of  others.  In  their  essence  and  principle  they  are 
as  old  as  history,  and  not  even  the  device  of  making  the 
victims  vote  away  their  own  liberty,  apparently  of  their 
own  free  will,  because  they  think  they  ought  to  do  so, 
has  anything  new  in  it. 


IS  LIBERTY  A  LOST  BLESSING? 

[1887] 

It  was  one  of  the  superstitions  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury that  Hberty  belonged  to  some  primitive  state  of  soci- 
ety, that  there  was  some  time  when  men  hved  in  a  "state 
of  nature,"  and  that,  at  that  time,  they  Hved  in  Arca- 
dian virtue,  Hberty,  and  simpHcity.  The  conception  of 
the  "noble  savage"  belonged  to  the  same  superstition. 
Rousseau  traced  all  the  inequalities  in  human  society  to 
the  cultivation  of  wheat  —  that  is,  agriculture  —  and  to 
the  use  of  iron  —  that  is,  tools.  He  was  at  least  far 
more  philosophical  than  his  followers  of  our  day  who 
talk  about  "land"  and  "machinery."  When  Rousseau 
went  back  up  the  stream  of  civilization  till  he  had  passed 
wheat  and  iron,  he  came  to  the  himting  savages  of  the 
Stone  Age.  Hence  he  took  his  idealized  American 
Indian,  a  creature  as  mythical  as  the  hippogriff,  as  his 
notion  of  the  unsp>oiled,  because  untutored,  son  of  nature. 

The  "state  of  nature"  and  the  "social  compact"  are 
exploded  superstitions,  or,  rather,  they  have  given  way 
to  a  new  set  of  superstitions — those  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Rousseau's  idea  of  liberty,  however,  is  not 
dead.  The  eighteenth-century  notions  of  liberty  and 
equality  have  passed  into  the  most  cherished  p>oHtical 
faiths  of  the  nineteenth  century.  That  notion  of  lib- 
erty is  the  anarchistic  notion.  It  is  the  conception 
according  to  which  liberty  means  unrestrainedness, 
emancipation  from  law,  lawlessness,  and  antagonism  to 
law,  as  it  goes  on  to  become  more  radical  and  more  log- 
ical.   This  is  the  popular  and  prevailing  conception  of 


132       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

liberty.  It  is  supposed  that  the  Anarchists  carry  it  to 
some  exaggeration,  but  there  is  no  apparent  rule  for 
drawing  the  line  to  discriminate  the  error  from  the  truth, 
and  there  is  no  dispute  about  the  truth  of  the  concep- 
tion itself. 

I  shall  presently  return  to  this  point  and  try  to  show 
that  no  such  notion  of  liberty  is  warranted  by  his- 
tory or  philosophy.  For  my  present  purpose  I  wish  to 
point  out  that  men  in  a  primitive  or  original  state  of 
society  never  enjoyed  any  such  condition  of  liberty. 
No  conception  of  the  primitive  man  could  well  be  more 
false  to  history  than  that  which  thinks  of  him  as  free  in 
any  sense  of  the  word.  The  notion  does  not  fit  him  at 
all.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree  incongruous,  because 
the  whole  conception  of  liberty  in  any  sense  is  a  product 
of  civilization,  and  what  little  unrestrainedness  of  action 
men  now  enjoy  they  owe  to  the  conquests  of  civilization. 
There  can  be  no  such  thing  as  liberty  where  there  is  not 
rational  reflection  and  choice.  Primitive  and  savage 
men  live  by  instinct,  custom,  and  tradition;  there  is  no 
right  of  private  judgment  among  them;  a  dissenter  among 
them  is  crushed  or  exiled,  when  to  be  exiled  is  to  be 
exposed  to  perish  in  isolation  from  human  society. 

If  we  turn  our  attention  particularly  to  industrial  or 
economic  activities,  do  we  find  that,  in  a  primitive  stage 
of  society,  there  was  freedom  in  this  domain?  De  we 
find,  as  is  so  often  asserted,  that  monopoly  is  a  product 
of  civilization,  or  of  "capitalism,"  or  that  it  is  growing 
all  the  time?    We  certainly  do  not  find  any  such  thing. 

Monopoly  is  in  the  order  of  nature.  The  relaxation 
of  monop>oly,  and  the  introduction  of  the  free  play  of 
effort,  that  is,  of  liberty  and  competition,  is  due  to  the 
growth  of  civilization.  It  seems  to  be  believed  by  a 
great  many  of  the  popular  writers  of  the  day  that  there 


IS  LIBERTY  A  LOST  BLESSING?  133 

not  only  was  liberty  in  the  primitive  state  of  society, 
but  that  liberty  did  not  then  mean  competition.  There 
was  not  therefore,  either  monopoly  or  competition,  but 
something  else  which  has  never  been  analyzed  or  defined. 
They  seem  to  regard  both  competition  and  monopoly 
as  products  of  civilization,  and  they  denounce  both  at 
the  same  time.  They  also  seem  to  thiok  that  monop- 
oly and  competition  are  at  opposite  poles,  wide  asunder, 
completely  distinguishable. 

Monopoly  is  a  condition  of  things  in  which  there  is 
no  scope  for  individual  energy  to  be  exerted  so  as  to 
advance  individual  welfare,  while  competition  is  the 
state  of  things  in  which  individual  energy  may  be  exerted 
so  as  to  advance  the  welfare  of  the  individual.  These 
two  combinations  of  social  circumstances  meet  and  to 
some  extent  intertwine;  they  are  not  separated  by  any 
gulf;  in  the  middle  ground  where  they  meet,  there  are 
many  cases  which  present  mixtures  of  the  two.  We 
have  limited  monopolies  with  all  degrees  of  limitation: 
almost  all  our  railroads  are  limited  monopolies;  pro- 
tected industries  are  monopolies  which  are  limited  in 
very  various  degrees,  according  as  they  are  carried  on 
by  one,  few,  or  many  persons,  making  organization  and 
combination  easy  or  diflicult. 

In  primitive  states  of  society,  monopoly  prevails  to 
such  an  extent  that  there  is  scarcely  any  scope  at  all 
for  the  application  of  individual  energy  to  the  effort  for 
ameliorating  one's  position.  It  has  been  one  of  the 
longest  and  most  painful  achievements  of  civilization 
to  open  chances  for  the  exertion  of  individual  energy,  and 
to  give  guarantees  that  the  results  of  such  exertion  shall 
be  secured  to  the  one  who  made  it.  The  progress  in 
that  direction  within  a  hundred  years  has  been  enor- 
mous  in    projxjrtion  to  any    achievement  in  the  same 


134       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

direction  in  any  earlier  period.  A  century  ago  two  men 
might  have  worked  side  by  side  at  a  loom;  one  might 
have  been  a  man  of  the  highest  industrial  talent,  and  the 
other  lazy  and  inefficient;  but  the  utmost  difiFerence  of 
position  to  which  they  could  attain,  aside  from  vice  or 
crime,  was  measured  by  the  distance  between  a  good 
and  a  bad  hand-weaver.  To-day  the  first  would  prob- 
ably become  a  master  of  industry,  a  capitalist,  and  a 
millionaire,  while  the  second  might  not  be  as  well  ofif 
now  as  then.  The  possible  difference  between  them  has 
therefore  undergone  an  enormous  widening.  Napoleon 
and  a  private  soldier  were  equal  when  each  carried  a 
gun  in  the  ranks;  but  if  each  were  put  in  command  of  a 
hundred  thousand  men,  one  would  lead  his  army  to 
slaughter,  and  the  other  would  conquer  a  world  with  his. 
In  the  case,  however,  of  a  modern  captain  of  indus- 
try, a  new  natural  monopoly  has  come  in  to  take  the 
place  of  the  one  which  has  been  broken  down  —  it  is  an 
interesting  and  instructive  illustration  of  the  constant 
recurrence  of  the  monopoly  principle.  The  master  of 
industry  has  a  monopoly  in  talent.  He  possesses  the 
organizing  and  executive  talent  which  is  one  of  the  rar- 
est abilities  that  men  ever  possess,  and  the  one  talent 
which  in  our  day,  when  industry  is  organized  on  a  world- 
wide scale,  on  impersonal  and  automatic  relations,  is 
worth  more  than  any  other  industrial  factor.  The  men 
who  have  this  talent  are  the  ones  on  whom  we  all  de- 
pend. There  are  millions  of  us  who  can  do  what  we 
are  told  to  do,  but  without  the  competent  leadership  of 
the  masters  of  industry  we  should  be  as  badly  off  as  a 
great  army  of  willing  soldiers  going  into  battle  without 
competent  generals.  The  executive  talent  is  a  natural 
monopoly;  it  has  to  be  exploited  under  the  methods  of 
monopoly. 


IS  LIBERTY  A  LOST  BLESSING  ?  135 

What  men  have  done,  therefore,  in  the  course  of  civ- 
ilization is  this:  they  have  broken  down  natural  monop- 
olies in  the  interest  of  free  competitive  effort.  In  the 
course  of  the  development  the  natural  elements  have 
reappeared  in  new  form,  or  new  developments  of  the 
monopoly  principle  have  presented  themselves.  These 
again  have  been  modified  or  overcome,  giving  wider 
scope  to  liberty,  but  again  producing  fresh  developments 
of  monopoly,  and  so  on  until  now.  The  reason  why  an 
artificial  monopoly  is  so  abominable  is  not  only  that  it 
interferes  to  put  some  men  down  in  order  that  others 
may  rise  at  their  expense,  but  that  it  is  a  working  back- 
ward of  the  state  machinery  against  that  whole  drift  of 
civilization,  which  the  state  machine  ought  to  fall  in 
with  and  assist  by  constantly  enlarging  the  fields  of  in- 
dividual effort  and  modifying  the  play  of  natural  monop- 
oly by  intelligent  control. 

It  is  a  form  of  expression  which  lends  itself  to  serious 
misapprehension,  if  we  say  of  a  certain  natural  fact 
that  it  is  beneficent  —  a  natural  fact  is,  and  that  is  the 
end  of  the  matter,  whether  we  men  give  it  our  sovereign 
approval  or  not.  We  have  nothing  to  do  with  a  natural 
fact  except  to  note  and  accept  its  existence,  and  to  gov- 
ern ourselves  accordingly.  Still,  when  we  note  a  nat- 
ural fact  we  can  often  trace  out  its  effects  upon  human 
interests,  and  perceive  modes  in  which  they  are  favor- 
able or  unfavorable  to  us.  In  that  sense  I  hold  that 
the  above-mentioned  play  of  monopoly  for  the  reward 
of  talent  is  beneficent.  In  other  essays  ^  I  will  examine 
a  whole  group  of  natural  monopolies,  to  see  if  the  same 
is  true  of  them  all,  including  that  of  land. 

1  Pp.  239  ff.  below. 


WHO  IS  FREE? 
Is  It  the  Savage? 

Among  the  current  phrases,  we  often  meet  with 
"wages-slavery,"  the  "slavery  of  debt,"  "tenant- 
slaves,"  etc.  In  many  cases  there  is,  no  doubt,  in  the 
use  of  this  language,  a  conscious  exaggeration,  which 
is  allowable  for  rhetorical  effect;  but  it  is  easy  to  note 
the  actual  effect  on  uncritical  people  when  such  lan- 
guage comes  to  be  taken  literally.  In  fact,  since,  during 
the  present  century,  all  slavery  has  come  to  be  consid- 
ered detestable,  and  all  freedom  has '  come  to  be  con- 
sidered good,  the  terms  "freedom"  and  "slavery"  have 
become  easy  and  current  terms,  which  it  is  assumed  that 
every  one  understands  without  trouble,  so  that  they  can 
be  used  as  current  coin  of  discussion.  When  it  is  as- 
sumed and  admitted  that  each  one  of  us  ought  to  be 
free,  that  is  commonly  supposed  to  mean  that  no  one  of 
us  ought  to  be  under  any  disagreeable  constraint  in  his 
activities  or  in  the  use  of  his  time.  If  then  we  hold 
that  civil  and  personal  liberty  are  immeasurable  bless- 
ings, and  real  moral  necessities  of  mankind,  it  is  neces- 
sary that  we  should  carefully  assure  ourselves  as  to  the 
true  meaning  of  liberty,  and  should  find  out  whether  it 
is  a  delusion  to  suppose  that  mortals  can  ever  be  uncon- 
strained; also  whether  anything  is  really  gained  by 
calling  the  wages  system  or  the  credit  system  "slavery." 

First  let  us  see  whether  the  savage  man  is  a  free  man. 
Questions  about  social  organization  have  always  been 


WHO  IS  FREE?  137 

discussed  by  reference  to  the  primitive  man,  or  the  man 
in  the  state  of  nature;  and  so  they  must  be  discussed. 
The  only  difference  is  that  we  may  depend  for  our 
notions  of  the  primitive  man  and  his  ways  either  on 
speculation  or  on  positive  investigation.  The  eight- 
eenth-century plan  was  to  reach  a  notion  of  the  primi- 
tive man  by  abstracting  one  after  another  the  attributes 
of  the  civilized  man,  until  a  sort  of  residuum  was  ob- 
tained. It  was  thought  that  that  must  be  what  the 
original  man  in  the  state  of  nature  was.  Rousseau, 
in  his  "Reasons  for  the  Inequalities  Among  Men,"  took 
the  American  Indian  as  his  type  of  the  primitive  man; 
he  took  the  notion  of  the  red  man  as  European  trav- 
elers had  described  him  before  the  middle  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  and,  having  rounded  off  the  notion  with 
some  poetical  additions,  he  went  on  to  make  his  deduc- 
tions as  to  civilization.  He  reached  the  result  that  the 
causes  of  social  inequality  were  wheat  and  iron.  To 
his  imagination,  the  red  men  lived  in  blissful  and  Arca- 
dian simplicity,  and  it  was  the  introduction  of  agricul- 
ture, and  the  use  of  tools,  which  destroyed  all  that  and 
introduced  emulation,  selfishness,  and  consequent  in- 
equality. 

Rousseau  has  gone  out  of  fashion,  but  his  method  and 
his  ideas  are  repeated  under  a  new  form  by  the  latest 
social  speculators.  But  the  error  was  not  in  seeking  to 
find  the  origin  of  civilization  or  to  compare  the  course 
of  its  development  with  the  point  of  its  beginning.  Our 
latest  science  has  to  continue  that  effort;  the  origin  of 
civilization  has  all  the  interest  to  us  which  belongs  to 
the  germs  or  beginnings  of  all  great  movements  which 
we  want  to  study.  The  wider  the  range  of  development 
which  we  can  study,  the  more  correct  the  knowledge 
which  we  obtain  of  it;    modem  scholars  have  therefore 


138       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

devoted  the  most  eager  study  to  the  facts  of  primitive 
society  and  the  origin  of  civilization. 

If,  now,  we  use  the  information  which  we  f>ossess  about 
the  savage  man  to  test  the  notion  that  he  p>ossessed 
natural  liberty,  we  find  that  he  was  and  is  anything  but 
free  in  the  sense  of  being  unrestrained.  It  might  do  for 
Rousseau  to  take  the  American  Indian  as  a  type  of  the 
primitive,  or  "original,"  or  "natural"  man,  but  we 
could  not  accept  him  as  such.  The  Indian  is  far  back 
in  civilization  when  he  is  regarded  from  the  stand-point 
of  the  civilized  man;  but  if  he  is  regarded  with  refer- 
ence to  the  real  and  ultimate  origin  of  society,  he  is  very 
far  on  up  the  scale. 

If,  then,  we  take  the  notion  of  the  Indian,  or  any  man 
of  lower  civilization,  as  wandering  freely  and  spending 
his  time  in  blissful  idleness,  correct  information  shows 
that  there  are  no  facts  to  support  it.  A  wandering  sav- 
age wanders  to  get  his  living,  and  as  a  rule  he  finds  it 
more  than  he  can  do;  the  exigencies  of  subsistence  hold 
him  as  tightly  as  they  hold  a  factory  hand,  and  his  suc- 
cess is  far  more  uncertain.  If  he  unites  with  others  like 
himself  in  order,  by  organization,  to  increase  his  power, 
then  he  must  submit  to  discipline  of  the  most  severe 
kind,  enforced  by  penalties  of  the  highest  severity. 
Instead  of  being  lawless  he  is  under  traditions  and  cus- 
toms which  admit  of  no  relaxation  whatever;  he  who 
tries  to  revolt  against  the  tradition  is  thrust  out  into 
banishment  or  put  to  death.  There  is  no  such  thing 
conceivable  as  private  judgment  or  dissent.  He  who 
breaks  a  custom  is  an  outlaw. 

The  noble  savage  may  also  wander  out-of-doors,  it 
is  true,  and  within  a  certain  range,  within  which  he  and 
his  ancestors  have  bought,  with  their  sufferings  and  blood, 
a  knowledge  of  nature;   but  though  he  understands  the 


WHO  IS  FREE?  ISO 

forces  of  nature  very  well,  outside  of  that  certain  range 
everything  in  nature  is  a  terror  to  him.  His  mythol- 
ogy bears  witness  to  this.  The  civilized  man  is  light  and 
careless,  or  even  merry  in  the  face  of  nature,  because 
he  understands  her  so  well;  when  nature,  however,  puts 
on  her  terrors  or  her  mysteries,  we  quickly  lose  our 
spirits  and  come  to  feel  our  insignificance.  Men  to  whom 
nature  is  always  terrible  or  mysterious  never  win  free- 
dom in  dealing  with  her. 

The  struggle  of  man  to  win  his  existence  from  nature 
is  one  which  he  begins  with  no  advantages  at  all,  but 
utterly  naked  and  empty-handed.  He  has  everything 
to  conquer.  Evidently  it  is  only  by  his  achievements 
that  he  can  emancipate  himseK  from  the  diflBculties  of 
his  situation.  His  position,  instead  of  furnishing  a  no- 
tion of  liberty,  furnishes  an  ideal  of  non-liberty;  and 
liberty,  instead  of  being  a  status  at  the  beginning  of 
civilization,  app)ears  rather  to  be  a  description  of  the 
sense  and  significance  of  civilization  itself;  that  is,  civ- 
ilization has  given  us  a  measure  of  emancipation  from 
the  unlimited  constraint  and  oppression  under  which 
mankind  began. 

Disease  and  old  age  are  the  most  pitiless  hardships  of 
life,  the  ones  in  the  face  of  which  liberty  is  the  greatest 
mockery.  Even  against  these  civilization  has  given  us 
a  great  enlargement,  but  the  savage  man  is  helpless 
against  them;  old  age  comes  on  very  early  for  him,  on 
account  of  all  the  other  hardships  of  his  condition.  The 
killing  of  old  people  by  their  children  among  savage 
tribes  seems  to  us  inexpressibly  shocking,  but  this  cus- 
tom means  something  very  different  from  the  selfish- 
ness of  the  young;  it  testifies  to  the  fact  that  the  first 
liberty  of  all,  the  liberty  to  exist,  becomes  an  unendur- 
able burden  to  the  savage  man  when  he  becomes  old. 


140       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Now,  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  if  we  conJBne  our 
attention  to  that  conception  of  liberty  which  consists 
in  wild  unrestraint,  the  realization  of  it  is  not  found  on 
any  of  the  lowest  stages  of  civilization  at  all,  but  on  one 
which  is  comparatively  high,  viz.,  the  pastoral  or  nomadic 
stage;  it  is  among  the  nomadic  hordes  of  Central  Asia 
or  among  the  men  of  the  Bedouin  type  that  the  wildest 
and  most  untamed  form  of  personal  liberty  is  to  be  found. 
Along  with  it,  however,  goes  ferocity,  the  practise  of 
plunder  as  a  virtue,  blood-thirstiness,  and  brutishness. 
Most  remarkable  of  all,  however,  is  the  fact  that  sla- 
very begins  on  this  stage;  it  appears  that  men  subju- 
gated each  other  on  the  same  stage  on  which  they 
subjugated  animals.  If  this  observation  is  true  (and 
although  not  completely  established  it  has  been  accumu- 
lating evidence  in  its  favor),  then  it  is  to  be  noted  that 
the  notion  of  wild,  unrestrained,  personal  liberty  found 
an  approximate  realization  only  when  society  was  so 
differentiated  that  some  could  get  this  freedom  because 
others  had  been  reduced  to  servitude. 

The  notion  that  liberty  was  a  primitive  endowment 
of  the  race,  which  has  been  lost  or  stolen  in  the  course 
of  civilization,  must  be  abandoned;  study  of  primitive 
society  shows  that  it  is  all  false  and  unfounded.  It  is 
an  exploded  myth  like  the  "state  of  nature"  or  the 
"social  compact."  We  shall  next  see  whether  there  can 
be  liberty,  in  the  sense  of  unconstraint,  in  civilization. 

Who  Is  Free?    Is  It  the  Civilized  Man? 

A  schoolboy  looks  through  the  window  and  wishes 
that  the  hours  of  restraint  were  over  so  that  he  could 
run  free;  he  regards  with  envy  the  animals  which  run 
"at  liberty"  and  the  birds  which  fly  in  the  air.     The 


WHO  IS  FREE  ?  141 

poets  have  also  used  the  birds  of  the  air  as  symbols  of 
liberty,  and  the  philosophers  have  assumed  that  the 
original  savage  enjoyed  the  same  liberty  as  the  beasts 
and  the  birds.  They  have  judged  like  the  schoolboy. 
The  schoolboy  would  find  little  of  the  liberty  he  imag- 
ines if  he  could  run  in  the  fields  but  had  no  one  to  earn 
his  living  for  him.  In  fact,  one  of  the  first  disillusions 
which  awaits  the  civilized  schoolboy,  when  his  school- 
days are  over,  and  he  gets  liberty,  is  to  find  that  the 
necessity  of  earning  a  living  proves  all  his  visions  of 
freedom  to  be  silly  and  empty.  If  he  had  known  more 
about  the  bird,  he  would  have  known  that  the  bird  does 
not  move  through  the  air  with  much  more  freedom  than 
a  stone.  The  beast  has  no  freedom  because  he  has  no 
intelligent  and  conscious  choice.  In  like  manner,  the 
savage  acts  from  instinct  and  unreflectively,  and  the 
notion  of  liberty,  as  we  understand  it,  does  not  apply  to 
him.  He  moves  about,  it  is  true,  out-of-doors,  with  a 
certain  degree  of  unrestraint,  but  his  life  is  automatic 
and  unreflective;  it  offers  no  room  for  the  exercise  of 
choice;  it  is,  in  general,  absorbed  in  the  desire  of  getting 
enough  to  eat  —  it  is  devoted  to  this  business  with  an 
intensity  and  directness  which  leave  no  room  for  liberty 
of  choice. 

The  mediaeval  formula  of  emancipation  consisted  in 
declaring  that  the  emancipated  person  might  go  where 
he  chose.  This  seems  to  indicate  that  the  mediaeval 
notion  of  liberty  was  freedom  of  going  and  coming.  It 
would  accord,  then,  with  the  sort  of  freedom  envied  by 
the  schoolboy,  and  enjoyed  by  the  savage;  but  the  serf 
who  had  been  emancipated  found  that  after  all  he  must 
go  where  he  could  earn  his  living;  that  his  freedom  of 
movement  was  soon  exhausted;  and  that  whatever  he 
had  won  consisted,  not  in  wandering  about,  not  in  becom- 


142       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ing  a  vagabond,  but  in  using  his  powers  to  further  his 
own  happiness,  not  that  of  others. 

Shall  we  infer,  then,  that  liberty  —  meaning  by  lib- 
erty still  unrestrainedness  of  action  —  is  only  possible 
for  the  civilized  people,  who  can  and  do  make  intelligent 
choices,  at  least,  between  different  aims  and  different 
codes  of  conduct? 

The  civilized  man  has  won  immense  control  over 
nature  in  certain  senses  and  in  certain  ways;  what  to 
the  savage  man  was  a  terror  is  to  him  a  slave.  All  this 
has  become  commonplace;  but  what  is  vastly  more 
important,  but  not  so  generally  understood,  is  that  we 
have  won  a  diversity  in  our  ways  of  meeting  nature.  If 
she  threatens  us  or  harms  us  in  one  way,  we  can  avoid 
that  way  and  meet  her  in  another,  where  she  serves 
our  purpose.  It  is  this  above  all  which  marks  the  posi- 
tion of  the  civilized  man,  as  compared  with  the  savage 
man,  in  dealing  with  nature.  The  latter  stood  face  to 
face  with  nature  on  few  and  direct  lines;  he  had  little 
or  no  variety  in  his  mode  of  life,  little  diversity  in  his 
lines  of  activity.  Hence,  if  he  was  blocked  on  those  to 
which  he  was  accustomed,  he  suffered  direct  defeat. 
Furthermore,  all  were  defeated  at  the  same  time,  so  that 
the  society  suffered  a  general  disaster.  In  a  highly  organ- 
ized society,  with  well-developed  arts  and  sciences,  such 
cannot  be  the  case.  On  the  contrary,  what  harms  one 
exercise  of  human  energy  benefits  another;  what  hurts 
one  group  in  the  society  is  an  advantage  to  another; 
what  proves  a  disaster  to  one  region  is  a  blessing  to  an- 
other. Calamities  are  common  enough,  but  their  scop>e 
is  limited;  they  are  offset  by  other  things;  their  effect 
is  alleviated  by  help  from  the  uninjured  parts  of  the 
society;  it  is  localized  and  restricted,  so  that  recovery 
is,  for  the  society  as  a  whole,  quick  and  easy. 


"WHO  IS  FREE?  143 

It  follows  that  the  civilized  man  has  a  measure  of  lib- 
erty under  the  natural  conditions  of  life.  He  constantly 
exaggerates  the  measure  of  this  liberty  and  boasts  of  it 
too  much,  for  it  is  really  only  a  little  elbow-room  which 
has  been  won;  but  his  condition  is  not  the  constrained 
necessity  of  the  savage  man. 

The  civilized  man  has  also  developed  power  of  intel- 
ligent reflection  and  rational  choice.  Leaving  aside 
all  controversies  of  the  metaphysicians  on  this  point,  we 
may  simply  observe  that  the  civilized  man  has  the  power 
to  choose  his  ends  in  a  higher  degree  than  the  savage 
possesses  any  such  power,  and  he  has  also  immeasur- 
ably extended  the  range  of  his  activities,  and  so  the 
possibilities  of  his  choice.  Liberty  of  disposition  of 
his  powers  is  worth,  to  the  civilized  man,  incalculably 
more  than  to  the  savage. 

It  appears,  then,  so  far,  that  liberty  is  the  endowment 
of  the  civilized  man,  and  that  he  needs  only  to  go  on  and 
use  it;  but  further  study  will  show  altogether  different 
aspects  of  the  matter. 

There  is  no  good  on  earth  that  comes  gratuitously  — 
there  is  always  a  price  to  be  paid.  The  price  of  liberty 
is  liberty.  The  civilized  man  is  bom  into  ties  and  bonds 
which  either  do  not  exist  for  the  savage  man,  or  are  very- 
light  for  him.  The  ties  of  family  are  arbitrarily  strong 
on  some  of  the  middling  grades  of  civilization;  in  the  low- 
est grades  they  are  generally  very  loose.  Among  civi- 
lized peoples  they  form  bonds  which  create  duties  and 
obligations  constraining  liberty.  The  inheritance  of 
civilization  brings  burdens  and  duties  to  those  through 
whom  it  comes;  it  entails  duties  also  to  that  civilized 
state,  by  whose  institutions  the  inheritance  is  preserved 
and  its  descent  guaranteed.  The  civilized  man  is  bom 
into  a  whole  network  of  restraints  which  the  savage  does 


144       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

not  know,  or  which  are  evidently  the  same  restraints 
which  we  have  already  noticed  in  the  case  of  the  savage, 
only  in  an  altered  form.  I  cannot  do  what  I  want  to 
do,  because  I  must  do  what  my  duty  to  my  parents  and 
my  country  calls  upon  me  to  do  —  a  duty  which  is  not 
arbitrary  or  traditional,  but  rationally  deduced  from 
the  relations  into  which  I  am  born. 

The  liberty  of  the  civilized  man  also  costs  discipline 
and  education.  Once  more,  we  find  that  the  civilized 
man  has  squirmed  around  into  a  new  position,  which 
makes  things  wear  a  little  different  aspect,  but  the  real 
case  is  not  essentially  altered.  The  savage  youth  has 
his  hard  discipline  to  undergo,  so  that  he  may  endure 
the  hardships  of  savage  life  and  fulfil  the  career  of  a 
savage  man;  our  schoolboy,  eager  to  escape  his  duty, 
is  under  the  same  constraint  in  a  new  form.  The  higher 
the  attainments  in  civilization  the  heavier  and  longer 
this  task  of  taking  up  and  fitting  upon  ourselves  our 
inheritance. 

Another  part  of  the  cost  of  sharing  in  the  products 
of  civilization,  including  its  liberty,  is  that  we  must 
enter  into  the  organization  of  civilized  society,  and  bear 
our  part  in  its  work  of  production.  Civilization  is  built 
on  capital;  it  is  all  the  time  using  up  capital;  it  cannot 
be  maintained,  unless  the  supply  of  capital  is  kept  up. 
It  is  not  a  figure  of  speech  to  say  that  it  is  like  the  neces- 
sity of  fuel  if  we  want  to  keep  up  the  speed  of  a  railroad 
train,  because  the  railroad  train  is  really  a  case  in  point. 
To  get  a  share  in  the  products,  we  must  do  a  share  of  the 
work,  and  when  we  do  that  our  liberty  is  gone.  The 
bigger  the  crowd,  the  more  intense  the  struggle;  the 
higher  the  organization,  the  more  imperative  its  coer- 
cion on  all  its  members.  We  cannot  get  our  living  unless 
we  get  into  the  organization;    when,  however,  we  once 


WHO  IS  FREE  ?  145 

get  into  it,  it  is  ruin  to  fall  out,  but  if  we  stay  in,  we  must 
submit.  We  must  make  contracts  binding  us  to  the 
other  members  of  the  organization,  and  we  must  keep 
them.  But  they  fetter  our  liberty;  we  must  spend  our 
time  at  the  bench,  the  counter,  or  the  desk,  and  we  can- 
not get  away.  WTiere  is  there  any  liberty,  in  the  sense 
of  unrestrained  self-will,  for  the  civilized  man.^*  The 
declaimers  about  the  ills  of  civilization  are  not  astray  in 
their  facts;  the  civilized  man  is  the  slave  of  the  indus- 
trial organization,  of  contracts,  of  the  market,  of  sup- 
ply and  demand  —  call  it  what  you  will,  it  is,  after  all, 
only  the  weight  of  existence,  and  liberty  means  for  us 
just  what  it  did  for  the  savage;  it  means  that  we  may 
maintain  existence  if  we  can. 

Capital  is  necessary  to  civilized  existence;  so  they  tell 
us  that  we  are  nowadays  the  slaves  of  capital,  because 
we  cannot  do  what  we  want  to  do  without  it.  We  bor- 
row it;  then  they  say  that  we  are  the  slaves  of  debt, 
or  of  "hard  bargains,"  because  we  have  made  a  contract 
which  it  is  irksome  to  fulfil.  We  are  the  slaves  of  the 
market,  because  we  cannot  get  a  satisfactory  price  for 
our  goods.  We  are  the  slaves  of  supply  and  demand, 
because  we  cannot  get  the  wages  we  would  like  for  our 
services.  So  we  get  in  a  rage  and  propose  revolution, 
or,  at  least,  state-intervention,  because  we  supposed 
that  we  could  do  as  we  liked,  and  now  we  find  that  we 
cannot. 

Who  Is  Free?    Is  It  the  Millionaire? 

The  uncivilized  man  is  not  free,  because  he  is  bound 
by  the  hardships  of  his  condition,  by  tradition  and  cus- 
tom, by  superstition,  and  by  ignorance.  He  can  only 
escape  from  the  limitations  thus  fastened  upon  him  by 
education,   and  organized  labor,  systematically  applied 


146       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

to  overcome  the  difficulties  of  his  situation.  If,  how- 
ever, he  undertakes  this  course,  he  must  submit  to  the 
constraint  of  orderly  and  persistent  exertion;  he  must 
till  the  land,  or  he  must  shut  himself  up  in  a  factory  for 
ten  hours  a  day.  These  conditions  are  impossible  for 
him  —  they  are  just  the  things  which  he  cannot  do.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  civilized  man,  if  he  wants  the  lib- 
erty to  roam  about  which  the  savage  possesses,  must  live 
as  the  savage  lives,  by  hunting  and  fishing,  and  his  de- 
mands on  life  must  be  reduced  to  the  range  of  those  of 
the  savage.  If  he  chooses  this  line  of  policy  and  efifort, 
however,  he  finds  that  he  cannot  earn  a  living,  even  such 
as  the  savage  man  gets,  because  he  has  not  the  necessary 
knowledge  and  skill  for  that  mode  of  life. 

Hence  it  appears  that  the  notion  of  liberty,  as  eman- 
cipation from  irksome  constraint,  finds  no  realization 
at  either  end  of  the  scale,  but  that  men  give  up  some 
things  to  get  others;  that  they  sacrifice  one  liberty  to 
get  another;  that  they  change  their  point  of  view  and 
their  notions,  and  that  liberty  consists  in  a  better  adjust- 
ment of  their  notions  to  their  situation  at  a  given  time. 
What  we  commonly  boast  of  as  progress  consists  in  meas- 
uring the  situation  at  one  time  by  the  notions  of  another. 
It  would  be  just  as  impossible  for  operatives  from  a  New 
England  cotton  mill  to  live  on  the  plains  as  for  Indians 
to  work  ten  hours  a  day  in  a  New  England  cotton  mill. 
Whether  the  historical  movement  by  which  society  has 
moved  from  the  life  of  the  Indians  to  that  of  the  cotton 
operatives  has  been  progress  or  degeneration,  depends 
on  whether  it  is  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Indian 
or  the  white  man.  We  must  be  convinced  that  liberty 
to  do  as  one  pleases  is  not  a  gift  or  boon  of  nature;  it 
is  not  a  natural  and  original  situation  which  we  have  lost, 
or  which  has  been  taken  from  us.     All  that  notion  van- 


WHO  IS  FREE?  147 

ishes  into  the  realm  of  illusions.  All  our  ferocious  de- 
mands that  our  birthright  shall  be  given  back  to  us,  and 
all  our  savage  threats  about  those  who  have  robbed  us, 
go  with  it. 

It  was  an  easy  way  to  attain  the  objects  of  our  desire 
to  put  them  into  the  list  of  the  "rights  of  man,"  or  to 
resolve  that  "we  are  and  of  right  ought  to  be"  as  we 
should  like  to  be.  That  method  has  had  great  popularity 
for  the  last  hundred  years  and  is  now  extremely  pop- 
ular; but  if  we  have  any  liberty,  it  is  because  our  ances- 
tors have  won  it  by  toil  and  blood.  It  is  not  a  boon, 
it  is  a  conquest,  and  if  we  ever  get  any  more,  it  will  be 
because  we  make  it  or  win  it.  The  struggle  for  it,  more- 
over, must  be  aimed,  not  against  each  other,  but  against 
nature.  When  men  quarrel  with  each  other,  as  every 
war  shows,  they  fall  back  under  the  dominion  of  nature. 
It  is  only  when  they  unite  in  co-operative  effort  against 
nature  that  they  win  triumphs  over  her  and  ameliorate 
their  condition  on  earth. 

It  may  be  said,  then,  that  liberty  is  to  be  found  at 
the  summit  of  civilization,  and  that  those  who  have  the 
resources  of  civilization  at  their  command  are  the  only 
ones  who  are  free.  But  the  resources  of  civilization  are 
capital;  and  so  it  follows  that  the  capitaUsts  are  free, 
or,  to  avoid  ambiguities  in  the  word  capitalist,  that  the 
rich  are  free.  Popular  language,  which  speaks  of  the 
rich  as  independent,  has  long  carried  an  affirmation  upon 
this  point.  In  reality  the  thirst  for  wealth  is  a  thirst 
for  this  independence  of  the  ills  of  life,  and  the  inter- 
dependence of  wealth  on  civilization  and  civilization  on 
wealth  is  the  reason  why  the  science  of  wealth  is  con- 
cerned with  the  prime  conditions  of  human  weKare,  and 
why  all  denunciations  of  desire  to  increase  or  to  win 
wealth  are  worse  than  childish. 


148       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

A  native  African,  of  the  tribes  who  own  cattle,  may 
increase  his  herds  to  a  greater  and  greater  number.  He 
has  no  other  conception  of  wealth  —  in  the  absence  of 
commerce  wealth  admits  of  no  further  differentiation 
for  him.  He  soon  comes  to  a  limit  beyond  which  he  can- 
not watch  over  his  property,  and  then  if  he  hires  some- 
body to  take  care  of  it  for  him,  in-  effect,  he  shares  it  with 
them.  Some  of  the  socialists  seem  to  have  in  mind  some 
limited  right  of  property,  under  which  this  would  be  the 
ideal  and  only  mode  in  which  property  could  be  held. 
The  native  African  cannot,  of  course,  use  more  than  so 
much  of  the  useful  things  which  his  herds  produce;  he 
and  his  family  can,  at  best,  only  eat,  drink,  and  wear 
so  much.  After  that,  if  he  wants  to  own  more,  it  is  mere 
vanity  and  vexation,  and  at  last  becomes  such  a  bur- 
den that  it  defeats  itseK,  and  that,  in  trying  to  escape 
this  burden,  he  really,  if  not  avowedly,  gives  the  prop- 
erty away  to  those  who  take  care  of  it.  In  the  meantime, 
although  his  herds  have  emancipated  him  from  the  cares 
of  his  mode  of  life,  that  is,  from  hunger  and  thirst  and 
cold,  they  are  a  very  precarious  property;  they  offer  a 
very  vulnerable  point  of  attack  for  an  enemy;  they 
awaken  cupidity;  they  cost  anxiety;  and  if  they  are 
carried  off  by  a  stronger  enemy,  they  leave  their  former 
possessor  in  deeper  misery  and  helplessness  than  if  he 
had  never  had  them. 

If  any  one  regards  that  as  a  paradisaical  state  of  things 
or  as  a  rational  limit  of  the  form  and  mode  of  property 
which  might  be  wisely  allowed,  he  must,  of  course,  con- 
demn trade  and  money  and  civil  government,  because 
these  have  led  on  to  that  development  of  society  in 
which  a  man  can  have,  hold,  and  enjoy  indefinite  wealth. 
When  trade  is  introduced,  it  allows  the  owner  of  herds 
to  part  with  the  surplus  of  them  for  other  things  which 


WHO  IS  FREE  ?  149 

he  is  glad  to  get.  Trade,  however,  is  limited  until  money 
is  provided  as  a  means  for  carrying  it  on.  It  is  security 
of  property,  established  by  a  firm  civil  government, 
which  makes  it  possible  to  hold  proi>erty  in  amount  indefi- 
nitely beyond  what  one  can  watch  and  defend  by  one's 
own  vigilance. 

Wealth,  therefore,  in  a  highly  organized  civilized  soci- 
ety, gives  an  emancipation  from  the  ills  of  earthly  life 
which  is  enormous,  when  we  take  as  a  standard  for  it 
the  condition  of  the  poor  or  the  uncivilized.  It  com- 
pletely banishes  the  anxiety  for  food  and  drink.  It  has 
put  millions  of  the  human  race  in  such  a  position  that, 
although  they  call  themselves  f>oor,  nevertheless  they 
never  in  their  whole  lives  know  what  it  is  to  feel  fear 
lest  they  may  not  have  food  to  eat  —  an  anxiety  which, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  the  consuming  care  of  uncivilized 
life  in  general,  and  makes  every  other  thought  impos- 
sible. Wealth  has  created  for  all  civilized  men,  even  the 
poorest  of  them,  an  artificial  environment  of  clothing, 
shelter,  artificial  heat,  pavements,  sewers,  means  of 
locomotion,  education,  and  intelligence,  a  vast  amount 
of  which  is  common  property,  and  is  taken  and  assumed 
without  thought,  as  if  it  belonged  to  the  order  of  nature. 
It  all  goes  into  the  common  stock,  justly  enough,  because 
it  is  really  in  large  part  a  product  of  the  organization  in 
which  all  bear  parts  which  cannot  be  analyzed  out  and 
paid  for  by  supply  and  demand. 

A  man  who  is  rich,  therefore,  in  this  society,  can  draw 
to  himself  and  his  family,  elaborate,  highly  perfected, 
and  efficient  defense  against  the  ills  of  life.  The  things 
which  shorten  life  are  work  and  care;  he  cannot  abolish 
these,  but  he  can  reduce  their  power  in  a  very  impor- 
tant measure.  It  is  all  enlargement,  liberty,  intelligent 
liberty  in  the  highest  and  best  sense,  fit  for  the  men  who 


150       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  EASSYS 

work  and  achieve,  but  do  not  wail  or  dream.  It  issues 
in  leisure,  the  most  valuable  of  goods  in  this  connection, 
being  a  means  of  quiet  and  undisturbed  application  of 
mental  force  to  the  planning  of  new  efforts  and  new 
achievements. 

So  much  for  this  view  of  the  matter.  We  may  be 
ready  to  say:  liberty  is  a  product  of  civilization,  but  it 
is  only  for  the  rich.  There  is,  however,  another  view 
which  remains  to  be  taken  in  order  to  find  out  whether, 
among  us,  the  popular  notion  of  liberty  is  realized  by  the 
millionaire  or  the  tramp. 

Who  Is  Free?    Is  it  the  Tramp? 

The  two  things  which  kill  men  are  work  and  worry. 
The  man  who  has  nothing  is  under  the  bondage  of  labor; 
the  man  who  has  property  is  under  the  bondage  of  care. 
He  who  owns  land  and  has  raised  a  crop  must  be  anxious, 
when  the  harvest-time  approaches,  lest  another  shall 
reap  it.  He  leaves  it  exposed  because  he  cannot  protect 
it,  but  he  fears  to  sleep  lest  he  should  lose  the  fruits  of 
his  labor.  If  this  care  does  not  exist,  it  must  be  because 
civil  order  and  security  exist  to  such  a  degree  that  it  is 
done  away  with.  Civil  security,  however,  lies,  as  some 
of  our  friends  are  so  fond  of  reminding  us,  in  the  vol- 
untary effort  of  all  his  neighbors  to  defend  his  property 
for  him.  He  who  has  lands  or  goods  has  given  pledges 
to  fortune,  and  exposed  himself  to  her  shafts,  at  so  many 
points. 

It  is  a  childish  notion  that  wealth  keeps  itself,  and 
throws  off  its  product  without  effort  or  care;  but  one 
would  think  to  read  what  we  read  that  it  was  very  widely 
entertained.  To  keep  wealth  is  as  hard  as  to  get  it. 
Moth  and  rust  conspire  to  destroy  it;   the  covetousness 


WHO  IS  FREE?  151 

of  man  is  in  feud  against  it.  The  follies  and  mistakes 
of  individuals  and  nations  are  punished  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  it.  It  is  not  possible  to  make  increase  from  it 
unless  it  is  put  to  reproductive  use;  but  every  applica- 
tion of  it  to  new  production  involves  the  risking  of  it  on 
a  judgment  of  facts  which  cannot  be  ascertained  with 
certainty;  some  of  which  may  be  future.  In  every  appli- 
cation of  capital  to  reproduction  it  must  undergo  trans- 
mutation or  transformation.  We  seek  it  again  in  a  new 
product;  but  before  we  can  get  it  again  we  must  go 
through  an  oj>eration  of  exchange  involving  value. 
WTiether,  therefore,  we  shall  find  our  capital  again  with 
increase,  or  not,  is  a  question  which  can  only  be  answered 
by  the  result;  and  it  will  at  best  depend  upon  chances 
of  the  market,  which  defy  foresight. 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  man  who  sells  services 
in  the  market  is  under  the  hazards  of  the  market.  The 
worst  troubles  of  which  he  complains  are  the  tyranny 
of  supply  and  demand,  and  the  freaks  of  the  market 
which  interrupt  the  demand  for  labor.  If  he  hires  any- 
body to  carry  this  risk  for  him,  he  has  to  pay  for  that  ser- 
vice. That  is  the  explanation  of  many  differences  in  the 
comparative  rate  of  wages  in  different  employments. 

Now,  however,  we  see  that  the  owner  of  capital,  if 
he  tries  to  get  profit  on  it,  encounters  also  this  same 
tyranny  of  the  market.  If  he  hires  any  one  to  take  the 
risk  for  him,  he  must  pay  for  it;  if  he  wants  the  great 
gains,  he  can  get  them  only  by  putting  in  the  effort  and 
care  which  are  required  for  the  successful  conduct  of 
great  enterprises.  The  conditions  of  this  success  are 
as  stringent  and  coercive  as  those  of  the  labor  market, 
if  not  more  so.  The  vigilance  which  conducts  industrial 
enterprises  can  never  relax :  if  one  owns  cattle  and  horses, 
he  must  guard  them  against  accidents  and  disease;    if 


152       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

he  owns  houses,  he  must  fear  fire  and  storm;  if  he  owns 
ships,  he  must  expect  accidents  and  shipwreck;  if  he 
owns  railroads,  his  chances  of  profit  are  precarious  for 
a  dozen  reasons.  I  remember  once  hearing  a  mechanic 
who  had  become  rich  say  something  hke  this:  "I  used 
to  throw  down  my  tools  at  six  o'clock  and  think  no  more 
of  my  work  until  morning.  I  envied  rich  men  and 
thought  that  they  had  only  to  live  at  ease  and  free  from 
care;  but  since  I  have  had  property  I  have  had  more 
sleepless  nights  than  in  all  my  life  before." 

I  pass  over  the  cares  of  riches  which  belong  only  to 
the  care  of  objects  of  luxury  like  horses  and  villas  and 
yachts,  and  also  the  cares  which  come  from  the  burdens 
laid  on  wealth  by  other  people  who  know  what  should 
be  the  duties  of  wealth  and  are  eager  to  see  that  wealth 
performs  them.  There  is  another  set  of  constraints  and 
limitations  which  comes  from  the  fact  that  the  contract 
relations  of  wealth  are  necessarily  far  more  numerous 
and  complicated  than  those  of  poverty.  The  great  lim- 
itation on  the  liberty  of  the  civilized  man  is  that  which 
comes  from  his  contracts.  Society  is  bound  together 
by  these,  and  they  increase  in  a  high  ratio  by  the  side 
of  the  increase  of  wealth;  they  forbid  a  man  to  do  as  he 
would  like  to  do,  and  force  him  to  do  what  he  has  agreed 
to  do;  he  is  under  bonds  to  do  this  from  the  very  fact 
of  his  wealth,  which  makes  him  responsible.  It  is  one 
of  the  injustices  of  modern  society  which  are  never  men- 
tioned in  our  current  discussions,  but  one  of  the  most 
mischievous  from  which  we  suffer,  that  a  man  who  has 
no  property  may  break  contracts  with  impunity. 

It  is  no  light  thing,  also,  that  a  man  who  has  prop- 
erty should  be  responsible  for  all  damages  which  may 
proceed  forth  from  himself  or  his  property  against  any 
of  his  fellow-citizens;    which  liability,  although  it  is  as 


WHO  IS  FREE  ?  153 

great  in  law  and  morals  against  a  poor  man,  is,  never- 
theless, practically  null  in  the  latter  case.  With  the 
tendency  of  the  law  to  extend  the  liability  of  the  owners 
of  capital  for  all  the  injuries  attendant  upon  the  use  of 
capital,  even  to  those  injuries  which  proceed  from  it 
only  constructively,  and  to  relieve  those  who  have  no 
capital  from  ordinary  human  responsibility  for  them- 
selves, this  injustice  is  increasing.  It  is  one  of  the  results 
of  the  reckless  dogmatizing  which  is  going  on  in  regard 
to  social  obligations,  founded,  not  upon  reasonable  con- 
siderations of  the  relations  which  exist,  but  upon  pre- 
viously adopted  partiality  for  one  set  of  interests.  Any 
assertion  that  wealth  ought  to  have  social  or  civil  priv- 
ileges sends  a  shiver  of  horror  through  modem  society, 
which  asserts  that  all  men  are  equal;  but  how  can  two 
men  be  equal,  one  of  whom  is  pecuniarily  responsible 
for  his  contracts  and  his  torts  and  the  other  is  not? 

It  has  been  said  above  that  if  the  man  of  property 
escapes  the  first  anxieties  about  the  possession  of  prop- 
erty, it  must  be  because  he  lives  in  an  orderly,  civilized 
state,  in  which  his  neighbors  concur  to  guarantee  his 
security  of  possession.  Hence,  however,  comes  also  the 
constraint  of  liberty  by  the  state  which  protects;  he 
who  relies  upon  state  protection  must  pay  for  it  by  lim- 
itations of  liberty;  by  every  new  demand  which  he 
makes  on  the  state,  he  increases  its  functions  and  the 
burden  of  it  on  himseK.  Weary  of  protecting  himself, 
he  begs  the  state  to  take  care  of  him;  the  state,  how- 
ever, only  orders  him  to  take  care  of  himself  in  co-opera- 
tion with  others  under  its  supervision,  and  it  takes  toll 
from  him  in  money,  time,  and  services  for  giving  him 
this  good  advice  and  this  wholesome  coercion. 

From  all  this  it  appears,  then,  that  in  getting  prop- 
erty we  do  not  get  liberty,  in  the  sense  of  absence  of 


154       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

constraint  and  opportunity  to  do  as  we  please.  We 
have  only  changed  the  form  of  our  constraint.  Tired  of 
barbarism  and  its  limitations,  we  take  civilization  at  its 
price.  The  price,  however,  is  a  new  constraint.  It  con- 
sists in  care  and  worry;  in  police  regulation  and  all  the 
compromises  of  civilization;  in  co-operation  to  sustain 
institutions,  and  in  voluntary  submission  to  law.  The 
instruments  of  the  new  servitude  are  the  means  which 
served  to  emancipate  us  from  the  old  one;  the  rich  man, 
if  he  gets  more  of  the  emancipation,  gets  also  more  of 
the  new  servitude.  Liberty  has  not  been  found  yet.  We 
are  like  men  mired  in  a  swamp,  who,  in  pulling  out  one 
leg  or  one  arm,  only  plunge  others  more  deeply  in  —  so 
long  as  we  follow  this  chimsera  of  liberty  here  on  earth 
to  do  as  we  please. 

But  there  is  another  case  which  should  be  considered 
before  we  give  up  our  pursuit  of  the  idea  as  a  mere  chi- 
msera.  May  not  the  tramp  be  the  true  free  man.'*  He 
is  a  civilized  man.  He  lives  in  a  civilized  community; 
he  shares  in  its  institutions;  he  contributes  his  vote  to 
its  political  welfare;  he  takes  a  philosophical  view  of 
wealth,  and  avoids  its  cares;  he  nourishes  a  profound 
sentiment  of  its  duties;  he  has  no  prop>erty  to  perish, 
no  investments  to  worry  about.  The  story  is  told  of 
a  tramp  who  came  to  a  certain  valley,  which  was  inun- 
dated by  a  freshet.  There  was  a  great  demand  for  help 
to  carry  persons  and  property  in  boats  to  a  place  of 
safety.  The  tramp  threw  down  the  bundle  which  con- 
tained all  he  had  in  the  world,  and  declared:  "This  is 
my  harvest."  He  demanded  ten  dollars  a  day,  and  went 
to  work  at  that  rate.  This  was  true  philosophy;  he 
kept  out  of  the  labor  market  until  the  "conjuncture" 
of  supply  and  demand  was  all  on  his  side,  and  then  he 
went  in. 


WHO  IS  FREE  ?  156 

The  tramp  enjoys  the  true  Hberty  of  going  and  coming, 
which,  in  the  case  of  the  barbarian,  is  only  apparent 
and  delusive.  He  is  free  from  the  restraints  of  civ- 
ilization. Whether  he  is  free  from  the  superstition  and 
traditional  servitude  of  mind  which  marks  the  savage, 
it  is  difficult  to  say  —  it  does  not  belong  to  the  definition 
of  his  case  that  he  should  be  so  free.  To  the  extent,  then, 
to  which  he  is  free  to  do  as  he  pleases,  he  is  so  because, 
although  born  into  civilized  society  and  continuing  in 
it,  he  has  abandoned  most  of  the  blessings  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  wins  the  rest  only  by  begging,  or  taking  them 
without  rendering  any  equivalent.  He  must  upon  occa- 
sion endure  hunger  and  cold  like  the  savage  man;  he 
must  endure  outlawry,  suspicion,  and  contempt;  in  some 
states  he  finds  himself  a  criminal,  in  fact,  a  felon.  In 
such  cases  he  is  not  merely  a  drone  or  a  neutral,  still 
less  is  he  a  tolerated  parasite;  he  is  at  war  with  society. 
That  is  to  say,  a  certain  small  number  of  men  can  real- 
ize the  dreamed-of  poetical  liberty  of  the  barbarian  by 
seeking  it  in  the  midst  of  civilization,  if  they  will  endure 
contumely  to  get  it,  and  if  they  will  sacrifice  all  the  other 
blessings  of  civilization  for  it. 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY 

From  one  end  to  the  other  of  history,  from  one  extreme 
to  the  other  of  the  social  scale,  we  can  find  no  status 
in  which  men  realize  the  kind  of  liberty  which  consists 
in  doing  as  one  pleases,  or  in  unrestrainedness  of  action. 
If  we  should  go  on  to  consider  the  case  of  the  learned 
man,  or  the  statesman,  or  the  monarch,  or  any  other  class 
and  position,  we  should  find  the  same.  The  Emperor 
Nicholas  of  Russia,  who  left  the  reputation  of  a  mili- 
tary autocrat  behind,  complained  that  his  Minister  took 
a  position  before  the  chimney,  and,  to  everything  which 
the  Emperor  proposed,  simply  answered:  "It  is  not 
j>ermitted  to  do  it."  Liberty  to  do  as  one  pleases  is  not 
of  this  world,  for  the  simple  reason  that  all  human  and 
earthly  existence  is  conditioned  on  physical  facts.  The 
life  of  man  is  surrounded  and  limited  by  the  equilibrium 
of  the  forces  of  nature,  which  man  can  never  disturb, 
and  within  the  bounds  of  which  he  must  find  his  chances. 

If  that  seems  too  ponderous  and  abstract  for  the 
reader,  it  may  be  interpreted  as  follows.  Man  must  get 
his  living  out  of  the  earth.  He  must,  in  so  doing,  con- 
tend with  the  forces  which  control  the  growth  of  trees, 
the  production  of  animals,  the  cohesion  of  metals  in  ores; 
he  must  meet  conditions  of  soil  and  climate;  he  must 
conform  to  the  conditions  of  the  social  organization, 
which  increases  the  power  of  a  body  of  men  to  extort 
their  living  from  the  earth,  but  at  the  price  of  mutual 
concessions  and  inevitable  subordination.  Organization 
means  more  power,  but  it  also  means  constraint,  and. 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  157 

at  every  step  of  advancing  civilization,  while  we  seem 
to  get  nearer  to  this  form  of  liberty,  the  means  of  eman- 
cipation proves  a  new  bond.  Such  being  the  case,  it  is 
a  plain  delusion  to  suppose  that  we  can  ever  emancipate 
ourselves  from  earth  while  we  are  upon  it. 

Yet  men  have,  in  all  the  higher  forms  of  civilization, 
been  determined  that  they  would  have  this  liberty. 
They  have,  as  it  were,  determined  that  they  would  fly. 
They  have  made  liberty  a  dream,  a  poetic  illusion,  by 
which  to  escape,  at  least  for  an  hour,  from  the  limita- 
tions of  earth;  they  have  put  liberty  at  the  beginning 
of  all  things,  in  the  "state  of  nature,"  or  far  on  in  the 
future,  in  a  millennium.  Within  the  last  century,  espe- 
cially, they  have  elaborated  notions  of  liberty  as  a  natural 
endowment,  belonging  to  everybody,  a  human  birthright. 
Their  experience  has  been  that  they  did  not  get  it,  and, 
when  this  clashed  with  the  smooth  doctrines  in  which 
they  had  been  educated,  they  have  become  enraged. 

Now  it  will  be  most  advantageous  to  notice  that  this 
notion  of  liberty  has  a  certain  historical  justification, 
and,  when  historically  considered,  a  relative  truth. 

The  mediaeval  social  and  political  system  consisted  of 
a  complex  of  customs  and  institutions  such  that,  when 
we  come  to  analyze  them,  and  find  out  their  philosophy, 
we  find  they  imply  all  the  time  that  men  are,  but  for 
p)olitical  institutions  and  social  arrangements,  under 
universal  servitude.  The  point  of  departure  of  adminis- 
tration and  legislation  was  that  a  man  had  no  civil  rights 
or  social  liberty,  but  what  was  explicitly  conferred  by 
competent  authority,  and  that  the  sum  of  rights  which 
any  person  had  were  not  such  as  belonged  generally  to 
all  members  of  the  society,  but  such  as  each,  by  his 
struggles  and  those  of  his  ancestors,  had  come  to  pos- 
sess.    The  modem  view  gets  its  interpretation,  and  its 


158       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

relative  justification,  by  reference  to  and  in  antagonism 
to  this;  the  doctrine  of  natural  liberty  as  an  antece- 
dent status  of  general  non-restraint  was  a  revolt  against 
the  doctrine  just  stated.  It  meant  to  affirm  that  laws 
and  state  institutions  ought  to  be  built  upon  an  assump- 
tion that  men  were,  or  would  be  but  for  law,  not  all 
unfree,  but  all  free,  and  that  freedom  ought  to  be  consid- 
ered, not  a  product  of  social  struggle  and  monarchical 
favor  or  caprice,  but  an  ideal  good  which  states  could 
only  limit,  and  that  they  ought  not  to  do  this  except  for 
good  and  specific  reason,  duly  established.  The  nine- 
teenth-century state  is  built  on  this  construction.  We 
are  obliged  all  the  time  to  assume,  in  all  our  studies, 
certain  constructions,  of  which  we  say  only  that  things 
act  as  if  they  were  under  such  and  such  a  formula, 
although  we  cannot  prove  that  that  formula  is  true. 
Institutions  grow  under  conditions  into  certain  forms 
which  can  be  explained  and  developed  only  by  similar 
constructions. 

Modern  civil  institutions  have  been  developed  as  if 
man  had  been,  anterior  to  the  state,  and  but  for  the 
state,  in  a  condition  of  complete  non-restraint.  The 
notion  has  been  expanded  by  the  most  pitiless  logic, 
and  at  this  moment  a  score,  or  perhaps  a  hundred,  eager 
''reforms"  are  urged  upon  grounds  which  are  only  new 
and  further  deductions  from  it.  At  this  point,  like  the 
other  great  eighteenth-century  notions  which  are  also 
true  relatively  when  referred  back  to  the  mediaeval 
notions  which  they  were  intended  to  combat,  the  notion 
of  abstract  liberty  turns  into  an  independent  dogma 
claiming  full  philosophical  truth  and  authority.  In  that 
sense,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  untrue  to  fact. 

When  we  turn  to  test  the  dogma  of  liberty  by  history 
and  experience,  we  find  immediately  that  the  practical 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  159 

reason  why  no  man  can  do  as  he  likes  in  a  human  society 
is  that  he  cannot  get  rid  of  responsibility.  It  is  respon- 
sibility which  fetters  an  autocrat,  unless  he  is  a  maniac. 
It  is  that  which  binds  the  millionaire,  which  limits  the 
savage  who  is  responsible  to  his  tribe,  which  draws  nar- 
row lines  about  the  statesman,  and  which  will  just  as 
inevitably  fetter  a  democratic  majority  unless  such  a 
majority  proposes  social  suicide.  Responsibility  rises 
up  by  the  side  of  liberty,  correlative,  conunensurate, 
and  inevitable.  Resp>onsibility  to  nature  is  enforced 
by  disease,  pK)verty,  misery,  and  death;  responsibility 
to  society  is  enforced  by  discord,  revolution,  national 
decay,  conquest,  and  enslavement.  Within  the  narrow 
limits  of  human  institutions,  liberty  and  responsibility 
are  made  equal  and  co-ordinate  whenever  the  institutions 
are  sound.  If  they  are  not  equal  and  co-ordinate,  then 
he  who  has  liberty  without  responsibility  incurs  a  corre- 
sponding loss  of  liberty,  or  servitude.  Those  men  and 
classes  who  at  any  time  have  obtained  a  measure  of 
abstract  liberty  to  do  as  they  like  on  earth,  have  got  it 
in  this  way  —  at  the  expense  of  the  servitude  of  some- 
body else.  Thousands  of  men  died  that  Napoleon 
Bonaparte  might,  in  a  measure,  have  his  way;  great 
aristocracies  have  won  wide  unrestraint  by  displacing 
the  lives  and  property  of  thousands  of  others,  when  the 
aristocracies  have  been  built  up  by  a  remission  of 
responsibility. 

The  worst  modem  political  and  social  fallacies  con- 
sist in  holding  out  to  the  mass  of  mankind  hopes  and 
afl5rmations  of  right  according  to  which  they  are  entitled 
by  prerogative  to  liberty  without  responsibility.  The 
current  political  philosophy,  having  fallen  under  the 
dominion  of  romanticism  (except  as  to  war  and  diplo- 
macy), has  apparently  no  power  to  do  more  than  to  fol- 


160       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

low  and  furnish  platitudes  for  the  popular  tendency,  or 
to  oppose  all  forms  of  liberty  in  the  interest  of  social- 
istic equality.  The  prosecution  of  that  line  of  criticism, 
however,  lies  aside  from  my  present  purpose. 

I  have  now  arrived  at  the  point  where  the  true  idea 
of  liberty,  as  the  greatest  civil  good,  can  be  brought  for- 
ward. The  link  between  liberty  and  responsibility  can 
be  established  and  upheld  only  by  law;  for  this  reason, 
civil  liberty,  the  only  real  liberty  which  is  possible  or 
conceivable  on  earth,  is  a  matter  of  law  and  institutions. 
It  is  not  metaphysical  at  all.  Civil  liberty  is  really  a 
great  induction  from  all  the  experience  of  mankind  in 
the  use  of  civil  institutions;  it  must  be  defined,  not  in 
terms  drawn  from  metaphysics,  but  in  terms  drawn 
from  history  and  law.  It  is  not  an  abstract  conception; 
it  is  a  series  of  concrete  facts.  These  facts  go  to  con- 
stitute a  status  —  the  status  of  a  freeman  in  a  modem 
jural  state.  It  is  a  product  of  institutions;  it  is  embod- 
ied in  institutions;  it  is  guaranteed  by  institutions.  It 
is  not  a  matter  of  resolutions,  or  "declarations,"  as  they 
seemed  to  think  in  the  last  century.  It  is  unfriendly  to 
dogmatism.  It  pertains  to  what  a  man  shall  do,  have, 
and  be.  It  is  unfriendly  to  all  personal  control,  to  offi- 
cialism, to  administrative  philanthropy  and  adminis- 
trative wisdom,  as  much  as  to  bureaucratic  despotism  or 
monarchical  absolutism.  It  is  hostile  to  all  absolutism, 
and  p)eople  who  are  well-trained  in  the  traditions  of  civil 
liberty  are  quick  to  detect  absolutism  in  all  its  new  forms. 
Those  who  have  lost  the  traditions  of  civil  liberty  accept 
phrases. 

The  questions  in  regard  to  civil  liberty  are:  do  we 
know  what  it  is?  do  we  know  what  it  has  cost.^*  do  we 
know  what  it  is  worth?  do  we  know  whether  it  is  at 
stake? 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  161 

Liberty  and  Law 

Sir  Robert  Filmer  defined  freedom  to  be  "liberty  of 
every  one  to  do  as  he  lists,  to  live  as  he  please,  and  not 
to  be  tied  by  any  laws";  on  this  definition  he  based  a 
philosophical  treatise  on  absolutism  in  government, 
affirming  its  natural  necessity  and  political  propriety. 
He  was  perfectly  right,  for  that  definition  of  liberty  is 
the  one  which  would  lead  to  despotism.  At  the  same 
time,  it  is  the  anarchistic  definition.  There  is  no  con- 
tradiction in  this.  Sir  Robert  meant  by  his  definition 
to  lay  a  basis  from  which  to  affirm  that  liberty  is  im- 
possible, absurd,  irrational;  the  anarchists  affirm  the 
same  definition,  and  take  it  to  be  rational,  real,  and 
true.  Around  this  issue  all  the  great  controversies  in 
political  science  of  the  last  two  hundred  years  have 
raged,  and  around  this  issue  they  must  revolve  without 
solution  so  long  as  the  metaphysical  notion  of  liberty  is 
accepted. 

The  liberty  to  do  what  one  lists  can  never  be  complete, 
unless  it  is  supplemented  by  the  further  liberty  not  to 
do  anything.  A  man  who  had  this  liberty  might,  there- 
fore, be  in  the  society  but  not  of  it,  living  upon  it  and 
enjoying  a  privilege  to  exert  his  energies  in  any  way, 
no  matter  how  harmful  to  other  men.  The  notions  of 
social  rights,  social  duties,  and  liberty  are,  therefore, 
all  bom  together,  and  correct  definitions  of  them  all 
will  be  consistent  and  coherent.  The  notion  of  liberty 
which  we  have  been  criticizing,  however,  is  hostile  to 
all  notions  of  rights  and  duties;  the  man  who  had  that 
liberty  would  have  no  duties,  nor  any  rights,  properly 
sf)eaking,  because  he  would  have  privileges.  Rights  and 
duties,  in  a  combination  consistent  with  liberty,  con- 
stitute the  social  bond.     Such  rights,  duties,  and  liberty 


162       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

are  the  elements  of  political  institutions  which  give  them 
their  form  and  value. 

We  who  live  in  the  midst  of  a  modem  civilized  state, 
with  high  security  of  persons  and  property,  with  well- 
defined  rights,  with  no  burdensome  duties,  with  no 
privileges  secured  to  some  at  the  expense  of  others,  eas- 
ily assume  that  this  all  comes  of  itself,  that  it  is  the 
natural  order  of  things,  and  that  any  departure  from  it 
would  have  to  be  forced  by  injustice.  We  believe  that 
men  have  easily  made  up  their  minds  that  they  would 
have  it  in  this  way,  and  that,  by  adopting  proper  resolu- 
tions at  the  right  moment,  they  have  brought  it  about. 
We  therefore  suppose  that  all  we  have  is  secured  to  us 
by  the  most  stable  and  unquestionable  reality,  that  we 
run  no  risk  of  losing  it,  that  we  can  afford  to  find  fault 
with  it,  throw  it  away,  despise  it,  and  break  it  in  pieces. 

The  facts  are  far  otherwise.  The  peace,  order,  secu- 
rity, and  freedom  from  care  of  modern  civilized  life  are 
not  the  product  of  human  resolutions;  they  are  due  at 
last  to  economic  forces,  which,  by  expanding  the  conditions 
of  human  existence  during  the  last  three  hundred  years, 
have  made  all  which  we  possess  possible.  Our  history 
has  been  written  on  politics  almost  entirely;  and,  with- 
out joining  in  the  current  easy  abuse  of  it  on  that  account, 
we  may  fairly  say  that  people  have  not  learned  at  all 
to  understand  the  extent  to  which  political  resolutions 
are  controlled  by  economic  conditions,  or  the  extent  to 
which  political  and  social  institutions  are  conditioned  in 
economic  facts.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  economic 
facts  are  always  present  and  controlling  in  the  appar- 
ently arbitrary  acts  of  constitution-makers  and  legis- 
lators. Our  whole  history  must  be  reconstructed  with 
a  view  to  this  fact.  If  that  is  once  done,  we  shall 
understand  better  the  narrow  range  within  which  the 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  163 

law-givers,  philosophers,  constitution-makers,  and  legisla- 
tors can  work. 

It  is  the  opening  of  the  new  continents  and  the  great 
discoveries  and  inventions  which  have  made  this  mod- 
ern age;  they  account  for  the  power  of  man,  and  they 
have,  by  their  form,  conditioned  the  mode  in  which 
that  power  might  be  used.  It  has  been  wasted  and 
abused  to  such  an  extent  that  man  has  never  enjoyed 
more  than  a  small  percentage  of  the  real  power  which 
was  at  his  disposal  for  the  enhancement  of  his  earthly 
existence;  and  the  modes  in  which  it  has  been  wasted 
have  been  chiefly  those  of  social  policy  and  political 
device.  The  ignorance,  folly,  and  wickedness  of  states- 
men, together  with  the  incompetence  of  the  social  phi- 
losophers, seem  great  enough  to  have  brought  the  world 
to  universal  penury,  if  the  discoveries  of  science  and  the 
inventions  of  art  had  not  been  rapid  and  strong  enough 
to  bear  all  the  losses  and  leave  a  surplus,  by  virtue  of 
which  mankind  could  gain  something.  The  chief  source 
of  new  power,  however,  has  been  the  simplest  of  all, 
that  is,  an  extension  of  population  over  new  land.  If  a 
half-million  proletarians  in  Europe  should  inherit  each 
an  estate,  no  one  would  think  it  any  mystery  that  they 
were  not  proletarians  any  more;  why,  then,  should  it 
be  a  mystery  that  they  are  not  proletarians  when  they 
have  inherited  an  estate  in  America  or  Australia  by  going 
to  it?  To  this  we  append,  in  passing,  another  useful 
reflection.  If  the  statesmen  and  philosophers  of  the  past 
made  such  mistakes,  which  are  now  visible  to  us,  how  do 
we  know  we  are  not  making  equally  gross  mistakes, 
which  somebody  will  expose  a  century  hence?  We  do 
not  know  it.  We  should  hold  this  ever  in  mind.  It  is 
exactly  the  reason  for  distrusting  our  wisdom  and  for 
"letting  things  alone." 


164       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

The  political  and  civil  liberty  which  we  enjoy  has 
issued  out  of  all  the  stumbling  and  blundering  of  the 
past.  The  errors  have  been  cured,  to  some  extent,  by 
bitter  experience.  The  institutions  which  are  strong 
and  sound  have  only  grown  up  through  long  correction, 
and  have  been  purified  of  the  stubborn  folly  of  men  only 
after  long  and  bitter  suffering.  They  are  not  stable; 
they  are  not  founded  in  immovable  facts;  they  are  deli- 
cate products  of  care  and  study  and  labor.  They  could 
be  easily  lost  and  they  require  high  good  sense  and  self- 
control  for  their  maintenance.  Civil  liberty  is  in  the 
highest  degree  unstable.  If  we  should  fill  libraries  with 
written  constitutions  we  could  never  guarantee  liberty. 
Terms  change  their  meaning,  ideas  move  through  a 
development  of  their  own;  nothing  stands  still  here  more 
than  elsewhere.  Intelligent  conscience  and  educated 
reason  are  the  only  things  which  can  maintain  liberty, 
for  they  will  constantly  be  needed  for  new  cases  and  new 
problems.  We  could  not  make  a  greater  mistake  than 
to  suppose  that  we  could  throw  down  all  social  institu- 
tions and  guarantees,  and  still  keep  all  the  peace,  order, 
security,  and  freedom  from  political  anxiety,  which  we  now 
enjoy.  Time  and  again  in  history  men  have  sacrificed 
liberty  rather  than  incur  anarchy.  When  anarchy  comes 
and  every  one  tries  to  realize  the  liberty  to  do  as  he 
likes,  the  man  who  has  anything  knows  that  he  will  not 
be  able  to  do  as  he  likes,  because  it  will  take  all  his  ener- 
gies and  more  to  protect  his  property.  He  knows  that 
some  of  the  other  people  who  will  be  doing  as  they  like 
will  be  sure  to  rob  him.  The  man  who  is  too  young  or 
too  old,  or  physically  weak,  and  the  women,  know  that 
they  will  not  do  as  they  like,  because  somebody  else  will 
make  them  do  as  he  likes.  These  will  all  flee  to  any 
protection  which  can  save  them  from  plunder  and  abuse, 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  165 

because  liberty  and  anarchy  are  totally  inconsistent 
with  each  other,  no  matter  what  the  definition  we  give 
to  liberty.  Filmer  was  right  when  he  held  that,  if  lib- 
erty meant  license  to  do  as  you  list,  it  made  despotism 
the  only  rational  and  possible  form  of  civil  government. 
There  is,  therefore,  no  liberty  but  liberty  under  law. 
Law  does  not  restrict  liberty;  it  creates  the  only  real 
liberty  there  is  —  for  liberty  in  any  real  sense  belongs 
only  to  civilized  life  and  to  educated  men.  The  sphere 
of  it  is  not  in  the  beast-like  non-reflection  of  savages; 
it  is  in  the  highest  self-determination  of  fully  educated 
and  responsible  men.  It  belongs  to  defined  rights,  reg- 
ulated interests,  specified  duties,  all  determined  in  ad- 
vance, before  passions  are  excited  and  selfishness  engaged, 
prescribed  in  solemn  documents,  and  guaranteed  by 
institutions  which  work  impersonally  without  fear  or 
favor.  Such  are  the  institutions  under  which  we  live. 
Their  integrity  is  worth  more  to  us  than  anything  else 
in  the  domain  of  politics;  their  improvement,  that  they 
may  perform  their  functions  better,  is  the  highest  polit- 
ical task  of  our  civilization.  That  is  why  liberty  in  its 
true  sense  is  worth  more  than  the  suppression  of  intem- 
perance, or  the  restriction  of  trusts,  or  the  limitation  of 
corporations,  or  any  other  pet  reform.  Liberty  which 
consists  in  the  equilibrium  of  rights  and  duties  for  all 
members  of  the  state  under  the  same  prescriptions,  lib- 
erty which  secures  each  man,  in  and  under  the  laws  and 
constitution,  the  use  of  all  his  own  powers  for  his  own 
weKare,  has  not  therefore  the  slightest  kinship  with  the 
spurious  liberty  of  doing  as  we  please,  but  is  the  prime 
condition  of  happy  life  in  human  society.  The  thing 
to  which  it  has  generally  been  sacrificed  in  the  past  has 
been  *'the  reason  of  state";  that  is,  some  other  object 
than  the  happiness  of  men,  an  object  selected  and  im- 


166       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

posed  upon  the  society  by  some  arbitrary  political  author- 
ity. There  is  a  modem  abuse  which  is  exactly  parallel 
to  this,  and  which  consists  in  using  the  law  to  impose 
pet  social  aims  on  society,  which  use  up  the  time  and 
energy  of  the  citizens  in  other  aims  than  those  chosen 
by  themselves  for  their  own  happiness.  Thus  the  most 
difficult  problem  in  respect  to  liberty  under  law  is  now 
what  it  has  always  been,  to  prevent  the  law  from  over- 
growing and  smothering  liberty. 

Liberty  and  Discipline 

The  proposition  that  "every  man  should  be  free  to  do 
as  he  likes,  without  encroaching  on  the  similar  liberty 
of  every  other  man,"  is  commonly  used  as  if  it  were  a 
a  simple  and  final  definition  of  social  and  civil  liberty. 
It  is  not  so,  however.  It  is  only  one  of  those  formulas 
which  we  get  into  the  habit  of  using  because  they  save  us 
the  trouble  of  thinking,  not  because  they  are  real  solu- 
tions. Evidently  any  two  men  might  easily  disagree 
as  to  the  limits  set  by  this  formula  to  their  resp>ective 
spheres  of  right  and  liberty  —  if  so  they  would  quarrel 
and  fight.  Law,  peace,  and  order  would  not  therefore 
be  guaranteed;  that  is  to  say,  the  problem  would  not 
be  solved. 

Civil  liberty  must  therefore  be  an  affair  of  positive 
law,  of  institutions,  and  of  history.  It  varies  from  time 
to  time,  for  the  notion  of  rights  is  constantly  in  flux. 
The  limiting  line  between  the  rights  and  duties  of  each 
man,  up  to  which  each  may  go  without  trenching  on  the 
same  rights  and  liberty  of  others,  must  be  defined  at  any 
moment  of  time  by  the  constitution,  laws,  and  institutions 
of  the  community.  People  often  deny  this,  and  revolt 
at  it,  because  they  say  that  one's  notions  of  rights  and 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  167 

liberty  are  not  set  for  him  by  the  laws  of  the  state.  The 
first  man  you  meet  will  undoubtedly  tell  you  that  there 
are  a  number  of  laws  now  in  force  in  the  United  States 
which  he  does  not  think  are  consistent  with  liberty  and 
(natural)  rights  —  I  who  write  this  would  say  so  of  laws 
restricting  immigration,  laying  protective  taxes,  etc. 
But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  behind  the  positive  law 
existing  at  any  time,  there  is  the  moral  reflection  of  the 
community  which  is  at  work  all  the  time.  This  is  the 
field  of  study,  debate,  and  reflection,  on  which  moral 
convictions  are  constantly  being  formed;  and  when  they 
are  formed,  they  find  their  way  into  laws,  constitutions, 
and  institutions,  provided  that  the  political  institutions 
are  free,  so  as  to  allow  this  to  take  place.  If  not,  there 
is  opened  a  gap  between  the  positive  law  and  the  moral 
convictions  of  the  people,  and  social  convulsions  ensue. 
It  is  a  constant  phenomenon  of  all  exaggerated  philos- 
ophers of  the  state,  that  they  obscure  this  distinction 
between  public  morals  and  positive  law.  The  older 
abuse  was  to  suppress  public  morals  in  the  name  of  posi- 
tive law;  the  later  abuse  is  to  introduce  public  morals 
into  positive  law  directly  and  immaturely. 

If  now  we  turn  to  individual  liberty,  stiU  it  is  true  that 
all  liberty  is  under  law.  The  whole  life  of  man  is  under 
law  —  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  it  otherwise.  It  is 
impossible  to  understand  society  except  we  think  of  it 
as  held  and  governed  by  forces  which  maintain  equi- 
librium in  it,  just  as  we  have  learned  to  conceive  of 
nature.  The  objections  which  are  made  to  this  notion 
are  exactly  parallel  to  those  which  were  formerly  brought 
against  the  same  conception  of  physics,  and  it  is  impos- 
sible to  argue  against  them,  because,  if  they  were  true, 
there  would  be  no  thinking  or  arguing  possible.  If 
social  science  deals  only  with  matters  of  expediency, 


168       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

then  there  is  no  social  science.  It  is  a  question  of  expe- 
diency whether  there  shall  be  two  Houses  in  the  Legis- 
lature or  one;  whether  the  Cabinet  ministers  shall  have 
seats  in  Congress;  whether  men  shall  work  ten  hours  a 
day  or  eight;  whether  we  should  use  more  or  less  paper 
money  inside  the  requirement  of  the  country;  whether 
university  education  should  be  based  on  Greek;  whether 
women  should  have  the  suffrage;  and  so  on.  If  all  the 
questions  of  social  science  are  of  this  nature,  there  is  no 
social  science;  there  is  nothing  to  find  out.  All  that  can 
be  said  is:  "Go  on  and  try  it";  and  the  people  who 
have  "views"  may  be  listened  to  if  they  show  what  they 
think  to  be  the  advantages  of  one  or  another  arrangement. 

In  truth,  however,  the  field  of  expediency  is  very  cir- 
cumscribed. It  is  surrounded  by  the  domain  of  forces, 
so  that  when  we  seem  most  free  to  adopt  such  plans  as 
we  please,  we  find  ourselves  actually  controlled  by  facts 
in  the  nature  of  man  and  of  the  earth,  and  we  find  that 
it  is  the  sum  of  our  wisdom  to  find  out  those  facts  and 
to  range  ourselves  under  them  and  in  obedience  to  them. 
Then  our  science  and  our  art  have  their  proper  places 
and  fall  into  due  relation  to  each  other. 

Thus  we  come  to  this:  that  there  is  no  liberty  for  the 
intelligent  man  as  an  individual,  or  in  voluntary  co-op- 
eration with  others,  except  in  intelligent  obedience  to  the 
laws  of  right  living.  His  first  task  is  to  know  the  world 
in  which  he  finds  himself.  He  must  work  and  he  must 
study.  He  is  not  turned  out  to  riot  in  self-indulgence 
because  he  is  free;  he  must  conform  to  the  conditions 
in  which  he  finds  himself.  He  must  obey.  When  he 
has  broken  all  the  bonds  of  old  institutions,  of  super- 
stition and  human  tyranny,  he  wakes  to  find  that  he  can 
have  no  liberty  unless  he  subdues  himself;  labor  and 
self-control  are  the  conditions  of  welfare.     He  must  not 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  169 

cry  out  that  liberty  is  only  a  delusion  and  a  juggle;  he 
must  understand  that  what  liberty  properly  means  for 
the  individual,  is  intelligent  acceptance  of  the  conditions 
of  earthly  life,  conformity  to  them,  and  manful  effort  to 
make  life  a  success  under  them. 

Not  to  follow  this  line  of  thought  into  the  domain  of 
private  morals,  I  turn  back  to  the  relation  of  individ- 
ual liberty  to  civil  liberty.  Civil  and  political  liberty 
cannot  release  a  man  from  state  burdens.  It  is  inter- 
esting and  instructive  to  notice  that  free  yeomen  in  the 
United  States  have  to  take  up,  of  their  own  accord, 
many  of  those  burdens  which,  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
were  regarded  as  the  heaviest  feudal  obligations.  The 
farmers  in  a  New  England  township  have  to  maintain 
roads  and  bridges,  do  police  duty,  and  maintain  all  pub- 
lic institutions  as  much  as  if  they  lived  upon  a  manor. 
A  farmer  who  works  out  his  taxes  on  a  road  does  not 
know  how  near  he  comes  to  reproducing  a  mediaeval 
villain.  The  burdens  are  there,  because  society  is  there; 
and  they  must  be  borne.  If  the  state  does  them  on  a 
larger  scale  than  the  township,  then  they  must  be  paid 
for;  and  when  we  see  men  eager  to  work  them  out  if 
they  can,  we  must  infer  that  the  burden  is  increased, 
not  lessened,  by  being  turned  into  taxes. 

When  the  peasant  obtains  freedom,  therefore,  and 
sets  up  a  democratic  republic,  he  finds  that  that  means 
only  that  he  must  turn  about  and  do  again  voluntarily, 
as  an  intelligent  citizen,  what  he  did  before  under  human 
compulsion.  When  he  gets  self-government,  he  finds 
that  it  still  means  government;  only  that  now  it  is  turned 
into  personal  discipline  instead  of  being  governmental 
compulsion.  If  he  gets  his  personal  liberty,  then  civil 
liberty  is  nothing  but  a  guarantee  that,  in  doing  his  best 
to  learn  the  laws  of  right  living  and  to  obey  them,  to  the 


170       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

end  that  his  life  may  be  a  success,  no  one  else  shall  be 
allowed  to  interfere  with  him  or  to  demand  a  share  in 
the  product  of  his  efforts.  That  is  what  the  function  of 
the  state  is;  and  if  it  does  more  or  less  it  fails  of  its 
function. 

Discipline,  therefore,  is  the  great  need  of  our  time. 
It  should  be  the  first  object  of  education.  By  it  we 
mean  something  much  more  than  the  mental  training 
about  which  we  used  to  hear  so  much.  We  mean  train- 
ing of  thought,  feeling,  and  emotions,  so  as  to  apprehend 
and  appreciate  all  things  correctly;  and  habits  of  self- 
control  so  as  to  hold  one's  self  within  the  limits  which 
enable  free  men  in  a  free  society  to  live  in  harmony  and 
pursue  their  ends  successfully  without  encroaching  on 
each  other.  Our  children  need  it.  Their  freedom  and 
fearlessness  give  them  spirit  and  courage;  but  they  lack 
form  and  training  —  they  would  not  be  any  less  free  if 
they  were  considerably  chastened.  We  need  it  as  par- 
ents; we  should  discharge  our  responsibilities  in  that 
relationship  much  better  if  we  were  schooled  to  more 
patience  and  to  more  rational  methods  of  exercising 
authority  or  instruction.  We  need  it  in  social  relations, 
because  it  is  only  by  virtue  of  discipline  that  men  can 
co-operate  with  each  other.  The  notion  that  co-opera- 
tion is  a  power  which  can  take  the  place  of  the  intelli- 
gence of  well-trained  men,  is  itself  a  product  and  proof 
of  undisciplined  thinking.  Men  increase  their  power 
indefinitely  by  co-operation  and  organization;  but  in 
order  to  co-operate  they  must  make  concessions.  The 
prime  condition  is  concord,  and  it  is  only  disciplined  men 
who  are  capable  of  attaining  to  that.  It  has  often  been 
said  that  men  have  to  surrender  their  liberty  in  order  to 
organize;  but  it  is  better  stated  that  they  gain  new 
power    consistently    with    liberty    by    organizing.     We 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  171 

need  better  discipline  in  science,  at  least  in  social  sci- 
ence. There  is  a  great  luxuriance  in  the  production  of 
"views"  and  notions  in  this  field;  and  the  greatest  need 
is  of  a  set  of  guarantees  and  criteria  by  which  this  exu- 
berance could  be  trimmed  down.  There  is  one  set  of 
persons  whose  liberty  would  certainly  gain  by  the  pro- 
duction of  such  tests  and  guarantees,  viz.,  those  who 
are  now  likely  to  have  to  pay  the  expense  of  all  the  social 
speculation  which  is  on  foot,  if  any  of  it  should  be  put 
to  experiment.  We  need  more  discipline  in  public  affairs. 
Our  freedom  would  lose  nothing  if  it  were  more  sober, 
and  if  a  great  many  abuses  which  the  law  cannot  reach 
were  more  under  the  ban  of  public  opinion. 

Thus  liberty  in  a  free  state,  and  for  intelligent  men, 
is  limited,  first  by  responsibility,  and  second  by  disci- 
pline. 

Liberty  and  Property 

M.  de  Laveleye  says:  "Property  is  the  essential  com- 
plement of  liberty.  Without  property  man  is  not  truly 
free."  It  will  be  worth  while,  taking  this  dictum  as  a 
text,  to  unravel  it  and  distinguish  its  elements  of  truth 
and  falsehood;  for  it  is  as  pretty  a  specimen  as  could 
well  be  found  of  the  sort  of  social  philosophy  in  which 
confusion  of  terms  and  uncleamess  of  thinking  set  apo- 
thegms in  circulation  which  easily  pass  as  the  prof  oundest 
wisdom,  when  they  are  really  null,  or,  still  worse,  are 
true  or  false  just  as  you  take  them. 

The  specimen  before  us  may  mean  either  of  two  things. 
It  may  mean  that  every  man  has  a  right  to  be,  and  ex- 
pects to  be,  a  free  man,  that  to  be  such  he  must  have 
some  property,  and  that,  therefore,  the  authority  which 
is  responsible  for  securing  him  his  freedom  is  bound  to 
see  to  it  that  he  gets  some  property;    or,  it  may  mean 


172       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

that  freedom  is  a  thing  which  every  man  should  seek  to 
win  and  acquire,  that  it  is  not  possible  to  acquire  it  with- 
out property,  and  that,  therefore,  every  sober,  industri- 
ous, and  socially  ambitious  man  should  properly  seek 
to  get  property.  Which  of  these  two  does  the  proposi- 
tion mean?  By  its  terms  it  is  impossible  to  decide.  It 
is  a  proposition  which  two  persons  might  understand  and 
employ  at  the  same  time  in  the  two  opposite  senses  with 
perfect  good  faith,  and  thereby  lay  the  foundation  for 
a  "social  discussion"  of  great  magnitude,  the  only  fruit 
of  which  would  be  to  find  out  at  last  how  they  had  mis- 
understood each  other  from  the  beginning.  We  have 
seen  numerous  instances  of  this  kind  and  it  can  hardly  be 
disputed  that  the  propositions  which  admit  of  such  dif- 
ferences of  interpretation  are  extremely  mischievous. 

If  the  proposition  is  taken  in  the  former  sense,  the 
notion  of  a  "free  man"  is  taken  to  be  something  simple 
and  definite,  which  can  be  made  the  basis  of  deductions, 
and  upon  which  obligations  of  social  duty  can  be  con- 
structed, aimed  especially  at  the  state,  which  guarantees 
liberty  as  a  political  right.  Property  then  becomes  a 
right  of  the  individual,  in  his  relation  with  society  or 
the  state.  He  would  not  forfeit  this  right  to  have  prop- 
erty unless  he  should  get  some  property  by  his  own 
effort  —  if  he  did  that  he  would  fall  under  the  "duties 
of  wealth,"  the  first  of  which,  as  we  learn  from  current 
discussion,  is  to  subscribe  to  or  contribute  the  fund  by 
which  the  state  makes  others  free. 

If  the  proposition  is  taken  in  the  latter  sense,  the 
notion  of  a  free  man  cannot  be  set  up  a  priori.  A  free 
man  is  such  a  man  as  results  under  the  limitation  of 
earthly  life,  when  he  has  individual  and  social  power 
sufficient  to  bear  up  against  the  difficulties  which  harass 
us  here.     The  proposition  would  then  say  that  no  man 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  173 

can  do  this  without  property  —  property  would,  there- 
fore, be  a  duty,  not  a  right.  A  man  could  not  lay  claims 
to  it  against  anybody  else;  he  would  be  bound  to  pro- 
duce it  from  his  own  energy,  and  by  the  use  of  his  own 
resources.  Property  would,  therefore,  arise  in  the  social 
organization  from  the  obligation  of  every  man  to  pay  his 
way  in  the  body  of  which  he  is  a  member,  and  to  carry 
the  burden  of  others  for  whom  he  is  responsible  —  first 
of  all,  of  his  wife  and  children.  It  would  not  arise,  as 
under  the  first  interpretation,  from  the  fact  that  he  needs 
something  which  he  has  not. 

According  to  these  two  interpretations,  the  proposi- 
tion contains  neither  one  nor  the  other  of  the  two  great 
philosophies  which  are  now  in  dispute  on  the  social 
domain.  They  might,  in  fact,  be  defined  as  affirming, 
one,  that  property  is  a  right  of  him  who  has  it  not  and 
a  duty  of  him  who  has  it,  looking  always  simply  at  the 
distribution  of  that  which  is;  the  other,  that  property 
is  a  right  of  him  who  has  it,  and  a  duty  of  him  who  has  it 
not,  viz.y  a  duty  to  work  and  produce  some. 

We  need  not  stop  for  any  long  discussion  of  the  defi- 
nition of  property,  for  it  does  not  seem  to  be  involved 
in  the  issue  before  us.  By  property  I  mean  the  sum  of 
things  which  serve  the  wants  of  men,  and  the  appropri- 
ation of  which  to  individual  use  and  enjoyment  is  assured 
by  the  power  of  society.  Such,  also,  seems  to  be  the 
sense  in  which  the  word  is  taken  in  the  passage  quoted, 
so  that  we  are  at  least  free  from  the  constant  confusion 
between  property,  the  metaphysical  notion  of  property, 
the  right  of  property,  and  the  moral  justification  of  prop- 
erty. The  author  of  this  thesis  has  not,  therefore,  a 
balloon  at  hand,  so  that  when  he  is  beaten  on  the  ground 
he  can  take  to  the  clouds.  The  property  which  a  man 
needs  to  make  him  free  is  food,  clothes,  shelter,  and  fuel 


174       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

to  release  him  from  the  slavery  of  want.  These  are 
material  things,  goods,  wealth,  products  of  labor  and 
capital,  objects  of  appropriation,  sources  of  exclusive 
satisfaction  to  him  who  consumes  them  on  himself;  they 
are  therefore  objects  of  strife,  occasions  of  crime,  defini- 
tions of  meum  and  tuum,  things  about  which  law  turns, 
chief  subjects  of  the  moral  law,  leading  facts  in  the  his- 
tory of  civilization,  having  their  origin  far  back  before 
it  was  sufficiently  developed  to  leave  traces  which  we 
can  follow.  That  is  what  is  meant  by  property  when 
it  is  said  that  without  property  a  man  cannot  be  free, 
no  matter  which  interpretation  we  give  to  that  proposi- 
tion. 

One  of  the  best  mediaeval  scholars  of  this  century, 
Guerard,  wrote:  "Liberty  and  property  entered  the  hut 
of  the  serf  together";  "Liberty  and  property  increased 
together  and  justified  each  other";  and  he  often  repeats 
statements  to  the  same  effect.  Another  scholar,  Pi- 
geonneau,  has  written  that  in  the  boroughs  which  were 
built  up  around  the  seats  of  bishops,  princes,  and  abbots, 
commerce  created  wealth,  and  wealth  created  liberty. 
The  history  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  studied  objectively 
and  not  romantically,  fully  sustains  these  dicta.  The 
history  of  modern  civilization  from  the  ninth  and 
eleventh  centuries,  about  which  these  writers  were  speak- 
ing, down  to  the  present  time,  reveals  the  course  by 
which  liberty  and  property  have  been  developed  to- 
gether; but  at  the  same  time  it  reveals  that  they  have 
grown  together  only  when  property  has  been  secure, 
and  the  right  of  property  has  been  strictly  maintained, 
and  that  nothing  has  ever  been  more  fatal  to  liberty 
than  socialistic  abuse  of  property. 

In  the  view  of  liberty  which  I  have  tried  to  present, 
liberty  is  a  conquest.     It  does  not  lie  at  the  beginning 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  175 

of  history  and  of  the  struggle  of  the  human  race  on  this 
earth;  it  lies  at  the  end  of  it,  and  it  is  one  of  the  richest 
and  finest  fruits  of  civilization.  We  should  not,  there- 
fore, if  we  gave  up  civilization,  fall  back  into  permanent 
rest  in  the  primeval  state  of  "natural  liberty";  we 
should,  on  the  contrary,  lose  liberty,  if  we  lost  civiliza- 
tion. It  is  liberty  which  is  unstable  and  always  in  jeop- 
ardy, and  which  can  be  maintained  only  by  virtue  and 
diligence.  The  two  great  means  by  which  men  have  won 
liberty  in  the  course  of  civilization  have  been  property 
and  knowledge;  whenever  the  distribution  of  property 
has  been  arbitrarily  interfered  with,  either  because  the 
state  became  too  strong  or  too  weak,  liberty  has  declined. 
Civilization  has  not  always  suffered,  because,  as  in  the 
formation  of  the  great  states,  under  certain  circumstances, 
civilization  might  win,  although  liberty  was  arrested  — 
civilization  will  win  any  time  at  the  expense  of  liberty, 
if  discipline  and  coercion  are  necessary  to  the  security 
of  property.  Therefore  the  truth  is  that  liberty  and 
property  go  together,  and  sustain  each  other  in  a  glori- 
ous accord,  but  only  in  the  highest  and  best  civilization 
which  men  have  yet  attained;  and  to  maintain  them  both 
together,  or  to  maintain  that  order  of  society  in  which 
they  are  consonant  and  co-operative,  is  a  task  which  man- 
kind has  never  yet  succeeded  in  accomplishing  save  in  a 
most  imperfect  way. 

The  serf  first  obtained  chattels  and  then  land  in  prop- 
erty; on  them  he  won  his  first  power,  and  that  meant 
his  first  liberty  —  meaning  thereby  his  personal  liberty. 
His  title  to  these  things,  that  is,  his  right  to  appropri- 
ate them  to  his  own  exclusive  use  and  enjoyment,  and 
to  be  sustained  by  the  power  of  the  state  in  so  doing, 
was  his  first  step  in  civil  liberty.  It  was  by  this  move- 
ment that  he  ceased  to  be  a  serf.     This  movement  has 


176       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

produced  the  great  middle  class  of  modem  times;  and 
the  elements  in  it  have  been  property,  science,  and  lib- 
erty. The  first  and  chief  of  these,  however,  is  property; 
there  is  no  liberty  without  property,  because  there  is 
nothing  else  without  property  on  this  earth.  How  can 
any  one  dispute  this  who  will  think  for  a  moment  that 
property  means  food  and  shelter  —  the  first  things  nec- 
essary that  we  may  exist  at  all;  and  that  we  use  the 
word  property  rather  than  wealth  or  goods  when  we 
mean  to  refer  to  their  appropriation  to  the  exclusive 
use  of  individuals.'^  Therefore  liberty  and  property  are 
not  inseparable,  and  if  they  are  separated  it  is  property 
which  is  fundamental  and  permanent,  and  not  liberty. 
Hence  the  proposition  which  we  undertook  to  exam- 
ine does  not  bear  analysis  well.  The  dictum  that  no  man 
can  be  free  without  property  is  entirely  true  or  false  as 
we  construe  it  one  way  or  another.  Freedom  and  prop- 
erty, I  say,  are  not  inseparable,  and  if  they  are  separated, 
it  is  liberty  and  not  property  which  is  the  adjunct.  If 
they  are  united,  they  do  not  simply  coalesce,  but  their 
combination  belongs  to  a  new  and  higher  order  of  civ- 
ilization, calling  for  new  social  knowledge  and  for  wisdom 
to  maintain  it. 

Liberty  and  Opportunity 

Among  popular  beliefs  whose  existence  is  manifested 
in  current  discussion  and  which  ought  not  to  pass  unchal- 
lenged, is  the  notion  that  a  chance  in  life  is  a  positive  and 
certain  gain  or  advance.  A  chance,  however,  is  a  chance, 
and  nothing  more.  Every  chance  involves  a  possibil- 
ity of  two  opposite  issues.  If  a  chance  or  opportunity 
is  used  one  way  it  results  in  gain  or  advantage;  if  it  is 
used  the  other  way  it  issues  in  loss  or  disadvantage.     A 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  177 

chance,  therefore,  has  no  moral  quality  or  value;  the 
moral  question  is:  what  will  be  done  with  it?  Hence 
the  fallacy  of  all  the  captivating  suggestions  about  ethics 
in  economic  or  other  strictly  impersonal  social  forces. 
The  moral  relations  are  in  the  personal  domain. 

Capital  has  no  moral  quality;  it  is  a  chance,  a  power, 
an  opportunity.  Capital  means  tools,  weapons,  food, 
etc.  A  pistol  has  no  moral  quality;  it  can  be  used  for 
good  or  for  ill,  as  men  count  good  and  ill.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  an  axe,  a  spade,  or  a  locomotive;  it  may 
also  be  said  of  food,  for  a  man  possessing  a  store  of  energy 
derived  from  food  may  spend  it  in  benefit  or  in  mischief. 
Food  furnishes  energy  to  a  laborer  or  a  murderer  indif- 
ferently; the  morals  are  in  the  man,  not  in  the  bread; 
they  go  with  the  intelligence,  or  with  the  intelligent 
responsibility,  and  turn  on  the  question:  what  will  he 
do  with  it.?^ 

All  capital,  therefore,  is  power;  it  furnishes  a  chance 
to  do  something.  It  brings  with  itself,  however,  the 
double  possibility  as  to  the  use  to  which  it  will  be  put. 
The  man  who  has  tools,  weapons,  or  food,  is  able  to  ac- 
complish far  more  in  any  direction  in  which  he  deter- 
mines to  apply  it  than  the  man  who  has  no  capital;  but 
then  the  question  how  he  will  use  it  has  become  so  much 
the  more  serious;  his  power  for  mischief  is  enhanced 
just  as  much  as  his  power  for  good.  As  to  himself,  the 
chance  is  no  less  serious;  he  has  power  to  make  far  more 
of  himself  than  if  destitute  of  capital,  and  he  has  power 
to  hurry  himself  to  personal  ruin  and  destruction  so 
much  the  faster. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  education.  The  moralists 
have  never  been  satisfied  with  the  old  adage  that  knowl- 
edge is  power.  They  felt  the  lack  of  the  moral  element 
in  it,  that  is  to  say,  they  felt  the  lack  of  the  element 


178       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

which  it  was  their  business  to  supply.  The  adage,  how- 
ever, was  true;  knowledge  is  power,  and,  in  itself  con- 
sidered, it  is  nothing  more.  The  notion  that  knowledge 
makes  men  good  is  one  of  the  superstitions  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Knowledge  only  gives  men  power  and 
it  furnishes  a  chance;  it  brings  with  it,  however,  the 
grim  alternative  already  cited:  will  the  man  who  has  it 
use  it  for  good  or  for  ill?  That  is  a  moral  question.  It 
finds  its  answer  in  the  springs  of  character,  and  the 
independent  self-determination  which  lies  deepest  in 
the  essential  elements  of  each  man's  personality.  This, 
by  the  way,  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  there  is  no  sound 
social  or  personal  strength  which  is  not  founded  on  the 
training  of  the  individual;  it  is  the  reason  why  individ- 
ual character  is  the  spring  of  all  good  in  man  or  the  state, 
and  why  all  socialism  is  profoundly  immoral.  Wher- 
ever collective  standards,  codes,  ideals,  and  motives 
take  the  place  of  individual  responsibility,  we  know 
from  ample  experience  that  the  spontaneity  and  inde- 
pendent responsibility  which  are  essential  to  moral 
vigor  are  sure  to  be  lost. 

The  things  which  men  call  "goods,"  therefore,  because 
they  are  means  or  powers,  are  not  positive  gains;  they 
only  open  the  lists  and  give  the  chance  for  a  struggle. 

Leaving  the  matter  of  morals  now,  and  turning  back 
to  the  practical  utilities  for  which  men  value  all  "goods," 
we  find  that  every  chance  which  is  opened  means  gain  or 
loss  according  to  the  wisdom  with  which  it  is  employed. 
Very  few  men  of  fifty  can  look  back  on  their  lives  and 
see  anything  but  chances  misapprehended,  opportuni- 
ties lost,  and  errors  in  the  use  of  powers. ,  It  is  simply 
a  wild  speculation  to  guess  what  a  hundred  men  would 
attain  to  if  they  should  correctly  understand  and  use 
every  opportunity   in   life  which   opened  before  them. 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  179 

and  should  exploit  it  to  the  utmost  of  which  it  was  ca- 
pable without  any  mistake.  The  suggestion  of  such  a 
thing  will  suffice  to  show  how  far  we  are  from  anything 
of  the  sort.  It  is  said  that  the  great  reason  why  sav- 
age tribes  remain  in  their  low  state  is  that  they  cannot 
keep  what  they  gain  and  use  it  to  get  more,  but  are 
constantly  slipping  back  and  beginning  over  again,  but 
in  truth,  the  most  civilized  societies  are  only  slightly  bet- 
ter. Methodical,  regular,  and  rhythmical  progress  is  a 
dream  as  yet. 

There  is  a  new  and  useful  line  of  work  yet  to  be  opened 
which  will  consist  in  an  examination  of  biography,  as  a 
comparative  and  analytical  study,  in  order  to  note  and 
generalize  the  conditions  of  successful  use  of  opportu- 
nity, and  to  perceive  the  effects  of  opportunity  misunder- 
stood or  abused.  An  opportunity  missed  may  be  a  mere 
negative  loss,  but  an  opportunity  abused  becomes  a 
cause  of  positive  harm  or  of  ruin.  The  career  of  every 
man  who  wins  distinction  affords  ample  proof  of  all 
phases  of  these  observations,  because  opportunities 
present  themselves  over  and  over  again.  Every  time 
that  an  opportunity  presents  itseff  a  new  decision  must 
be  made,  and  the  perils  of  mistake  must  be  incurred 
again.  Like  every  other  social  fact,  this  one  also  is  inten- 
sified in  our  time.  Our  fathers  attained  to  routine 
which  was  adequate  for  all  the  opportunities  or  chances 
which  came  to  them,  and  they  were  able  to  generalize 
rules  which  embody  *'the  good  old  way,"  and  were  in 
fact  in  those  days  correct  and  adequate  wisdom;  but  we 
cannot  live  that  way  if  we  would.  The  rules  do  not 
hold;  the  cases  are  more  various;  the  elements  are  aU 
the  time  changing,  or  at  least  recombining.  If  a  man 
makes  a  correct  judgment  once,  that  is  more  likely  to 
lead  him  astray  the  next  time,  because  he  will  have  con- 


180       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

fidence  in  his  experience  and  will  not  note  the  differ- 
ences in  the  cases.  Throughout  the  business  world  this 
observation  forces  itself  on  our  attention. 

I  have  gathered  these  observations  together  in  order 
to  lead  up  to  a  more  correct  apprehension,  as  I  think, 
of  the  purpose  and  achievement  which  we  have  a  right 
to  expect  from  civilization.  Civilization  does  nothing 
but  open  chances.  It  does  nothing  to  guarantee  their 
advantageous  effect.  Between  the  chance  and  its  effect 
lies  the  all-important  question:  what  will  he  do  with  it? 
Personal  liberty  is  nothing  but  a  name  for  a  series  of 
chances,  or  for  a  life  to  which  chances  have  access;  civil 
liberty  is  nothing  but  social  security  for  such  use  of  the 
chances,  within  the  limits  which  are  set  by  the  criminal 
law,  as  the  subject  of  them  sees  fit  to  make.  Neither 
affords  any  security  that  the  use  will  be  a  wise  one  or 
that  it  will  issue  in  a  result  which  the  individual  will 
later  regard  with  satisfaction.  If  he  gets  his  liberty 
he  must  take  his  responsibility;  for  he  may  be  assured 
that  if  he  finds  any  one  else  to  take  the  responsibility, 
he  will  speedily  lose  the  liberty  and  with  it  the  chances. 

The  sanctions  of  virtue  and  wisdom  are,  therefore,  all 
the  time  increasing,  and  above  all  they  are  all  the  time 
increasing  for  the  mass  of  mankind.  It  must  be  reit- 
erated over  and  over  again,  that  it  is  the  greatest  of  all 
delusions  to  suppose  that  we  can  make  what  we  call 
gains  without  meeting  with  attendant  ills.  The  added 
power  which  mankind  has  won  within  a  century  or  two 
brings  with  it  all  the  peril  of  the  alternative  which  has 
been  described  for  each  of  us  and  for  our  society.  We 
take  the  new  powers  and  opportunities  at  the  peril  of 
correctly  understanding  them  and  using  them.  If  the 
masses  are  to  take  the  social  power,  they  will  have  to 
look  to  themselves  how  they  use  it.     No  revolution  in 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  181 

social  order  has  ever  been  brouglit  about  by  the  oppres- 
sion, or  folly,  or  wickedness  of  the  rulers  —  if  such  things 
as  that  could  cause  revolutions  there  would  be  little  else 
but  revolution  in  history.  Revolutions  have  been  caused 
by  holding  out  hopes  of  bliss  which  the  ruling  powers 
were  not  able  to  bring  to  pass.  Democracy  will  take 
power  subject  to  the  same  penalty;  it  must  wield  power 
under  the  same  conditions.  So  far  it  has  been  lavish 
with  its  promises  and  has  had  no  responsibility  because 
it  has  only  been  applied  in  new  countries  where  there 
were  no  hard  social  problems.  It  has,  in  general,  prom- 
ised not  that  men  should  have  more  chances,  but  that 
they  should  realize  greater  fulfilment  of  what  their 
hearts  desire  with  less  need  of  study,  training,  and  labor. 
I  hold  that  that  is  the  very  opposite  of  the  truth,  and 
that  all  the  new  social  movements,  including  democratic 
political  institutions,  demand,  and  demand  especially 
of  the  masses,  painstaking,  knowledge,  philosophical 
power,  and  labor  far  beyond  what  has  ever  hitherto  been 
necessary.  The  reason  for  this  opinion  is  in  the  fact 
that  the  latest  social  movements  have  issued  in  increase 
of  social  power,  and  that  all  such  increase  involves  an 
alternative  which  can  be  successfully  solved  only  by 
added  mental  and  moral  power,  and  by  more  work. 

Liberty  and  Labor 

We  are  told  that  the  justification  of  labor  "is  to  be 
found  in  the  imperfection  of  human  nature."  It  betrays 
a  singular  state  of  mind  with  regard  to  social  phenom- 
ena to  talk  about  the  "justification  of  labor"  —  the 
justification  of  labor  is  that  we  cannot  live  without  it; 
we  might  as  well  discuss  the  justification  of  breathing, 
or  of  existence  itself.   It  is  idleness  which  needs  justifica- 


182       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

tion.  It  is  also  singular  that  anybody  should  find  sat- 
isfaction in  giving  definitions  to  labor,  poverty,  etc., 
from  which  one  can  argue  that  labor  and  poverty  may 
be  brought  to  an  end;  thus  it  is  said  that  labor  is  the 
pain  of  doing  what  one  does  not  know  how  to  do,  so 
that  it  may  be  rendered  non-existent  by  acquiring  skill. 
This  is  what  the  Germans  call  "fighting  a  mirror."  It 
is  only  literary  sleight-of-hand.  Labor  remains  just 
what  it  always  was  —  a  pitiless  fact,  an  inevitable  neces- 
sity. A  man  who  has  capital  on  which  he  can  live 
without  work  is  living  on  past  labor  accumulated  and  re- 
applied. There  is  no  way  in  which  one  of  the  sons  of 
men  can  live  without  labor  except  by  enslaving  some  of 
his  fellowmen  to  work  for  him.  Therefore  the  essence 
of  personal  and  civil  liberty  must  be  found  in  a  state 
of  things  in  which  each  one  labors  for  himself,  is  secured 
against  laboring  for  any  one  else,  and  is  assured  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  fruits  of  his  own  labor.  Civil  liberty,  when 
considered  by  itseK,  must  consist  in  such  laws  and  insti- 
tutions as  secure  an  equilibrium  of  rights  and  duties, 
and  allow  no  privileges  to  arise  on  one  side  and  no  servi- 
tudes on  the  other. 

Labor  is  all  expenditure  of  human  energy,  by  which 
the  sustentation  of  society  is  carried  on.  It  is  expendi- 
ture of  human  energy,  and  never  can  be  anything  else. 
Therefore,  it  wears  men  out  and  consumes  them.  In 
a  limited  measure,  and,  in  youth,  for  a  limited  time,  it 
may  be  pleasurable,  but,  as  it  is  sure  to  surpass  the  limits 
of  degree  or  the  limits  of  time  as  a  man  grows  old,  it  is 
certain  to  be  an  oppression  and  destruction  to  the  indi- 
vidual, against  which  his  will  must  revolt  and  under 
which  his  happiness  must  be  sacrificed,  because  his  phys- 
ical powers  are  sure  to  decay  while  yet  his  will  is  strong 
to  wish  and  to  undertake.     The  "sustentation  of  soci- 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  183 

ety"  is  also  the  purpose  of  labor,  because  the  individual 
earns  his  living,  in  modern  civilized  society,  by  holding 
a  place  and  bearing  a  share  in  the  collective  enterprise 
of  the  whole. 

It  is  in  vain  now  that  we  attempt  anywhere  in  this 
domain  to  reduce  the  notion  of  liberty  to  something  pos- 
itive or  hard  and  fast;  it  presents  itself  to  us  as  a  set  of 
dissolving  views,  which  are  forever  changing  with  the 
changing  asj>ects  of  social  relations  as  they  go  on  their 
course  of  evolution.  The  state  by  its  power  frees  men 
from  anarchy,  fist-law,  slavery,  etc.,  but  it  imposes  a 
new  set  of  restraints  of  its  own,  which  take  away  lib- 
erty on  another  side.  The  state  is  necessary  for  the 
first  function;  it  must  be  tolerated  in  the  second.  There 
would  be  no  rest,  no  finality,  except  when  each  one  had 
everything  at  no  cost,  or  with  no  offsets  and  attendant 
ills.  This,  therefore,  is  the  true  Utopia,  the  true  social 
ideal,  and  a  great  many  have  recognized  it  and  begun 
to  proclaim  it,  who  have  not  yet  formulated  or  under- 
stood it. 

It  is  an  instructive  fact  that  modern  methods  of  poor 
relief  and  modern  poor  laws  grew  up  as  slavery,  serf- 
dom, and  villainage  passed  away.  A  slave  could  never 
be  a  vagabond  or  a  pauper;  he  could  not  starve  to  death 
unless  there  was  a  general  collapse  of  the  entire  social 
order,  so  that  his  master  could  neither  feed  him  nor  find 
a  purchaser  for  him.  The  most  ingenious  apologies 
for  slavery  ever  made  in  this  country  consisted  in  devel- 
oping this  fact  into  an  argument  that  slavery  was  the 
only  cure  for  socialism,  the  only  sound  organization  of 
society  in  which  there  could  be  no  poverty,  and  that 
free  society  was  destined  to  destruction  by  the  war  of 
competition  and  unchecked  struggle  for  existence  within 
itseK.     A  great  deal  of  the  socialistic  declamation  which 


184       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

we  hear  meets  this  argument  on  a  completely  even  foot- 
ing and  concedes  all  its  effect;  the  declaimers  do  not 
see  it,  because  they  have  not  thought  out  the  matter  as 
well  as  the  old  slaveholders  had.  In  fact,  there  is  an 
indisputable  element  of  truth  in  it,  which  is  this:  liberty 
of  labor  is  not  a  social  finality.  It  is  not  a  definitive 
solution  of  the  social  organization,  but  only  alters  the 
forms  of  the  problems;  it  alters  nothing  of  the  social 
forces.  It  sets  free  some  personal  interests  which  were 
not  free  before,  and  in  so  far  it  adds  to  the  internal  war- 
fare and  confusion  of  society.  It  does  sharpen  and 
intensify  the  competition  of  life.  The  struggle  of  the 
forces  rises  in  intensity,  develops  more  and  more  heat, 
puts  stronger  and  stronger  strain  upon  political  insti- 
tutions, subjects  the  sober  sense,  the  high  self-control  of 
men  to  severer  tests,  demands  more  intelligent  power 
of  criticizing  dogmas  and  projects.  The  men  who  suj)- 
posed  that,  under  liberty,  they  were  going  to  soar  away 
from  irksome  limitations  of  earthly  life,  find  that,  though 
the  restraints  have  changed  their  form,  they  are  as  heavy 
as  ever. 

The  master  of  a  slave  or  serf  secured  the  subject  per- 
son against  all  the  grossest  calamities  of  human  life; 
but  he  made  the  slave  pay  him  a  high  insurance  rate 
for  that  security.  The  master  carried  all  personal  and 
social  risk  for  the  slave.  This  element  of  risk  is  one 
of  the  leading  phenomena  of  social  organization.  In  a 
barbarous  society,  where  there  is  scarcely  any  organiza- 
tion, each  person  carries  it  for  himself,  and  it  produces 
no  social  problem,  because,  so  long  as  it  turns  out  well 
for  the  individual,  he  makes  no  complaint.  When  it 
goes  against  him  he  perishes.  It  is  with  advancing 
organization  that  the  risk  element  becomes  distinctly 
differentiated,  becomes  an  element  of  status  or  contract, 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  185 

and  enters  into  the  rights  and  duties  of  the  parties  as 
they  are  related  to  one  another  in  the  organization. 

It  is  one  of  the  few  things  which  are,  I  believe,  agreed 
upon  by  all,  that  it  is  the  function  of  capital  to  cany 
the  time  delay,  and  to  bear  the  risk;  it  is  an  interesting 
question,  however,  whether  the  laborer  has  to  pay  the 
employer  for  carrying  the  risk.  Lasalle  demanded  that 
the  employee  should  be  admitted  to  a  share  in  the  risk, 
because  it  is,  as  he  assumed,  only  through  the  risk  that 
the  great  gains  come,  and,  therefore,  on  that  view,  the 
employee,  if  excluded  from  the  risk,  had  no  chance  of 
the  great  gains. 

The  wages  system  is  undoubtedly  a  high  and  intense 
organization,  involving  strict  discipline  upK)n  all  its 
members,  employers  as  well  as  employees.  It  is  there- 
fore an  intense  constraint  upon  personal  liberty.  Some 
of  the  phrase-makers  wax  indignant  at  the  notion  that 
the  laborer  is  viewed  and  treated  "as  a  ware;"  such 
indignation  serves  easily  the  purposes  of  rhetoric  and 
declamation,  but,  in  the  cold  light  of  fact  and  reason,  it 
is  only  ludicrous.  The  Greeks  called  a  laborer  an  "en- 
souled machine,"  which  may  be  regarded  as  a  more  or 
a  less  ofifensive  figure  of  speech  than  the  other,  but  neither 
of  them  is  anything  else  than  a  figure  of  speech.  Such 
figures  aside,  the  fact  is  that  the  laborer  binds  himself 
by  a  contract:  his  time  and  service  are  the  subject  mat- 
ter of  the  contract,  which  binds  his  liberty.  The  employer 
is  also  bound  by  a  contract:  he  is  bound  to  furnish  means 
of  subsistence,  according  to  the  terms  of  the  contract, 
whether  the  enterprise  in  which  he  and  the  laborers  are 
jointly  engaged  is  successful  or  not.  Every  man  who 
earns  his  living  is  bound  in  contracts  of  this  sort;  em- 
ployers and  laborers,  as  we  use  those  words  technically, 
are  only  special  cases.     Our  whole  organization  is  held 


186       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

together  by  contracts,  and  we  are  all  "wares,"  if  any- 
body is.  If  the  name  is  offensive,  we  may  change  it  to 
some  other,  but  we  shall  all  stand  just  where  we  do  now, 
viz.,  under  the  necessity  of  subjecting  our  individual 
wills  and  preferences,  that  is,  our  liberty,  to  the  condi- 
tions of  the  contracts  by  which  we  hold  our  places  in  the 
organization.  The  term  "labor"  cannot  be  taken  in  any 
narrower  sense  than  that  of  contributions  of  any  kind  to 
the  work  of  society,  and,  in  that  sense,  we  see  that  when 
we  labor  we  set  aside  our  liberty  for  the  sake  of  some 
other  good  which  we  consider  worth  more  to  us  under 
the  circumstances. 

The  advantages  of  the  wages  system  are  that  the  man 
who  has  nothing  makes  a  contract  which  throws  the  risk 
on  capital,  and  is  able,  reckoning  on  a  fixed  and  secure 
income,  to  make  plans  for  the  accumulation  of  capital 
under  his  circumstances,  whatever  they  are,  without  any 
element  of  speculation.  The  defects  of  the  wages  sys- 
tem appear  in  so  far  as  the  wages  income  is  not  fixed  and 
secure,  and  in  so  far  as  the  laborer  does,  in  fact,  find 
himself  involved  in  the  business  risk.  I  am  of  the  opinion 
that  the  path  of  improvement  and  reform  lies  in  the  per- 
fection of  the  wages  system  in  these  respects,  and  not  in 
any  of  the  pet  notions  which  are  propounded  for  sup- 
planting the  wages  system  by  some  other. 

Therefore  we  find  that  in  the  historical  development 
of  the  industrial  organization  there  have  been,  in  the 
forms  and  modes  of  laboring  and  of  combining  ourselves 
for  greater  power  in  supplying  human  wants,  changes  in 
status  and  relation,  but  that  the  necessity  of  working  for 
a  living  has  been  and  is  a  thraldom  from  which  there 
is  no  escape.  The  century  which  has  seen  slavery  as 
an  institution  cease  to  exist  almost  throughout  the  whole 
human  race,  has  easily  come  to  believe  in  an  ideal  state 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  187 

of  things  in  which  existence  should  cost  no  pain  or  self- 
denial  at  all.  Emancipation  provided  that  a  man  should 
work  only  for  himself.  It  is  very  evident  that  many 
are  enraged,  and  declare  liberty  all  a  delusion,  because 
they  had  persuaded  themselves  that  liberty  meant 
emancipation  from  the  need  of  working  at  all,  or  eman- 
cipation from  all  the  hardships  of  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. Hence  the  denunciations  of  "wages  slavery.'* 
But  we  have  seen  that  liberty  is  not,  and  never  can  be, 
anything  but  an  affair  of  social  institutions,  limited  by 
their  scope,  and  never  reaching  into  any  field  of  poetry 
or  enthusiasm.  It  can  never  make  toil  cease  to  be  pain- 
ful or  sacrifice  cease  to  be  irksome;  it  can  never  be  en- 
throned above  contracts  as  a  regulator  of  the  relations 
which  are  necessitated  by  the  social  organization,  be- 
cause it  is  on  the  same  plane  with  contracts  and  exists 
only  by  and  in  connection  with  them.  There  could 
never  have  been  any  abolition  of  slavery  and  serfdom 
but  by  capital.  The  rise  and  development  of  capital 
have  forced  higher  and  more  stringent  organization; 
and  this  means  new  and  in  some  resj)ects  more  irksome 
restraints  on  individual  liberty,  in  order  to  acquire  greater 
power  and  win  more  ample  sustenance  for  society.  The 
socialist  program  consists  in  resolving  that  we  demand 
the  liberty  we  dreamed  of  and  the  easy  security  we  used 
to  have  and  all  the  new  capital  and  wealth,  while  we 
declare  that  we  will  work  only  eight  hours  a  day  for  it 
and  will  not  study  for  it  at  all. 

Does  Labor  Brutalize? 

Those  who  live  a  hundred  years  from  now  will  doubt- 
less see  strange  results  from  a  period  in  which  men  dis- 
cuss their  own  position  on  earth  not  by  facts  but  by 


188       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ideals.  To  start  from  an  ideal  of  what  one  thinks,  judg- 
ing by  his  own  tastes,  that  a  man  of  moral  "elevation" 
ought  to  be,  in  order  to  find  out  what  must  be  true  in 
regard  to  man's  position  on  earth  and  what  laws  we 
ought  to  pass,  is  a  mode  of  proceeding  which  may  eas- 
ily be  popular,  but  is  silly  beyond  any  folly  which  human 
philosophy  has  ever  perpetrated.  It  is  evident  from 
the  simplest  observation  that  men  are  always  under 
compulsion  to  do  the  best  they  can  under  the  circum- 
stances so  as  to  attain  as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  ends 
they  choose.  The  whole  philosophy  of  existence,  and  the 
entire  wisdom  of  policy,  either  in  individual  or  common 
action,  is  bounded  by  the  terms  of  this  proposition; 
therefore  the  field  of  study  and  effort  is  in  the  under- 
standing and  modification  of  the  circumstances  and  in 
the  intelligent  choice  of  the  ends.  The  field  of  specu- 
lation which  embraces  imaginary  conditions  is  a  field 
of  folly. 

A  man  who  works  twelve  hours  a  day  may  do  it  be- 
cause he  likes  it,  or  because  he  hopes  by  it  to  accom- 
plish something  which  he  thinks  will  bring  to  him  an 
adequate  reward;  but  most  probably  he  does  it  because 
he  does  not  know  how  else  to  meet  the  demands  which 
are  made  on  him,  as  he  admits,  legitimately,  or  with  an 
authority  which  he  cannot  repel.  I  once  heard  the 
question  put  to  one  of  the  most  learned  scholars  of  this 
century,  whether  he  liked  to  work  all  the  time.  He 
answered:  "What  difference  does  it  make  whether  I 
like  it  or  not?  I  can  never  finish  what  I  have  to  do  any- 
way." No  serf  ever  worked  as  persistently,  enthu- 
siastically, and  restlessly  as  that  man  did.  It  is  time  to 
stop  this  insulting  talk  about  labor  as  if  nobody  labored 
but  a  hod-carrier  or  a  bricklayer;  the  hardest  worked 
classes  in  the  community  are  those  who  are  their  own 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  189 

bosses.  Therefore  I  distinctly  include  the  latter  ia 
what  I  have  to  say  about  labor. 

It  is  one  of  the  pet  phrases  of  modem  times  that  labor 
is  dignified  or  has  dignity.  It  is  a  good,  safe  phrase, 
because  it  sounds  well,  and  the  people  for  whose  con- 
sumption it  is  provided  cannot  tell  whether  it  makes  any 
difference  whether  labor  has  dignity  or  not,  or  what  would 
happen  if  it  was  not  dignified.  In  truth,  dignity  is  just 
what  labor  does  not  possess;  for  it  always  forces  a  man 
into  strained  posture,  ungraceful  motions,  dirt,  perspi- 
ration, disorder  of  dress  and  manner.  It  is  leisure  which 
has  dignity.  Moreover,  if  any  man,  no  matter  who  he 
might  be,  was  without  dinner,  he  would  undoubtedly 
pocket  his  dignity  and  go  to  work  to  get  one. 

Just  how  the  current  phrase  took  this  form  I  do  not 
know;  but,  although  it  is  somewhat  ludicrous  when 
strictly  analyzed,  it  has  a  history  behind  it  which  makes 
it  anything  but  ludicrous.  It  is  only  in  the  most  recent 
times,  and  then  only  in  limited  circles,  that  the  notion 
has  been  rejected  that  labor  is  degrading.  The  inten- 
tion of  the  phrase  that  labor  is  noble,  or  is  dignified, 
was  to  contradict  that  traditional  opinion  or  sentiment. 
In  the  classical  states  the  sentiment  was  universal  and 
undisputed,  that  manual  labor  in  itself,  and  any  labor 
when  prosecuted  for  pay,  was  degrading;  personal  serv- 
ices which  involved  touching  the  person  of  another 
were  also  regarded  as  especially  demeaning  to  him  who 
performed  them.  If  bread  and  butter  were  obtained  in 
return  for  social  functions  performed,  it  must  be  dis- 
guised in  some  form  of  honorarium;  it  would  dishonor 
a  man  to  take  wages.  The  only  honorable  forms  of 
effort  were  fighting,  ruling,  and  ecclesiastical  functions. 
This  is  the  militant  theory  of  the  comparative  worth  of 
social    functions;     it    proceeds    logically    and    properly 


190       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

from  the  standpoint  of  fighting  men  as  the  predominant 
and  most  important  class  in  the  community. 

We  have  to  thank  the  commanding  influence  of  clas- 
sicalism  in  our  modern  education  for  the  strength  which 
this  tradition  still  has  in  the  modern  world.  It  has  less 
weight  in  the  United  States  than  anywhere  else  in  the 
world;  but  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  United 
States  constitute  the  first  human  society  of  any  impor- 
tance in  which  other  notions  have  ever  prevailed  or  have 
ever  been  generally  professed.  An  American  will  be 
sure  to  be  astonished,  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  by  the 
scruples  and  mannerisms  with  which  professional  men 
surround  the  acceptance  of  the  remuneration  which  they 
are  quite  as  eager  to  get  as  any  Yankee;  it  looks  as  if 
they  were  ashamed  of  their  livelihood,  or  felt  themselves 
lowered  by  taking  what  they  have  fairly  earned.  It  is 
not  worth  while  to  seek  such  evidence  of  the  remnants 
of  the  same  sentiment  as  one  could  find  among  our- 
selves. 

The  feudal  period  produced  a  new  and  still  more 
intense  development  of  the  same  sentiment  in  a  some- 
what changed  form.  All  the  industrial  forms  of  liveli- 
hood were  regarded  as  servile  in  comparison  with  the 
functions  of  the  fighting  classes  and  their  ecclesiastical 
allies.  The  learned  class  were  on  the  line  between, 
unless  they  sought  ecclesiastical  rank,  or,  later,  as  le- 
gists, made  themselves  independently  necessary. 

It  is  only  very  slowly  that  the  notions  of  an  industrial 
and  commercial  civilization  have  fought  their  way  dur- 
ing the  last  five  hundred  years  against  the  militant  no- 
tions. The  latter  have  had  and  still  largely  retain  the 
aroma  of  aristocracy;  therefore,  they  are  affected  by  many 
who  do  not  understand  them.  The  dictum  that  labor  is 
noble,  or  dignified,  has  been  a  watchword  of  industrial- 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  191 

ism  in  its  struggle  to  assert  itself  against  militancy;  but 
the  industrial  classes,  as  fast  as  they  have  attained  wealth, 
have  deserted  industrialism  to  seek  alliance  with  aris- 
tocracy, or  to  adopt  the  modes  of  life  which  the  militant 
tradition  marks  as  more  honorable. 

The  revolt  against  the  notion  that  some  forms  of  use- 
ful service  to  society  are  in  themselves  more  worthy  than 
others,  is  as  yet,  therefore,  by  no  means  complete.  The 
so-called  labor  movement  is  fuU  of  evidence  that  the 
old  notions  still  prevail  in  the  manual  labor  classes; 
that  those  classes  do  not  themselves  heartily  believe  in 
the  dignity  of  labor;  that  they  are  not  proud  of  their 
own  social  functions;  that  they  have  been  imbued  by 
their  leaders,  not  with  honorable  self-respect  and  a  spirit 
of  determination  to  vindicate  their  own  worth  in  the 
social  body,  but  only  with  enough  vague  aspiration  to 
produce  an  irritated  sense  of  inferiority.  The  socialistic 
movement  bears  strongest  evidence  to  the  strength  of 
the  old  traditions;  the  assertions  of  fact  from  which  it 
starts,  in  respect  to  the  position,  relations,  rights,  and 
wrongs  of  classes,  are  all  obtained  by  applying  the  feudal 
traditions  to  the  existing  situation.  The  socialists  by 
no  means  urge  that  the  hod-carrier  and  the  statesman 
in  existing  society  shall  be  regarded  as  performing  func- 
tions each  in  his  way  useful  to  society  and  both  equally 
honorable  if  performed  with  equal  fidelity.  That  is  the 
bourgeois  and  capitalistic  doctrine.  The  socialists  as- 
sume that  the  two  are  not  now  equally  worthy  in  popular 
esteem  or  social  weight,  or,  consequently,  in  industrial 
fact,  and  they  assert  that  the  existing  order  must 
be  changed  so  as  to  make  them  equal,  not  in  worth,  but 
in  the  personal  enjoyment  which  can  be  won  from  the 
social  functions  and  in  the  ideals  of  humanity  which  can 
be  attained  through  them. 


192       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

I  have  before  me  an  article  produced  by  this  discus- 
sion, but  belonging,  not  to  the  socialist  or  semi-socialist 
but  to  the  sentimental  school,  in  which  it  is  affirmed  that 
manual  or  operative  labor  is  brutalizing.  This  is  in 
direct  contradiction  with  the  doctrine  that  labor  is  en- 
nobling, which  is  what  the  sentimentalists  have  been 
telling  us  for  a  century.  The  contrast  which  the  writer 
has  in  mind  is  between  manual  or  factory  labor  and  labor 
with  a  larger  intellectual  element  in  it;  he  seeks  to  estab- 
lish his  contention  by  describing  the  long  factory  hours, 
the  close  confinement,  the  irksome  constraint,  etc.  What, 
then,  shall  we  infer?  Is  the  sweet  doctrine  that  labor 
is  dignified  and  ennobling  all  wrong?  Were  the  ancients 
right?  Is  labor  for  pay  always  degrading,  and  does  it 
become  worse  and  worse  as  we  go  down  the  grades  from 
those  occupations  which  have  the  most  brain-work  and 
least  manual  work  to  those  which  have  the  most  manual 
work  and  least  brain- work?  The  issue  is  clear  and  it 
is  not  difficult;  it  would  do  great  good  to  solve  it  com- 
pletely, for  it  would  clear  up  our  ideas  on  many  topics 
which  are  at  present  in  confusion. 

I  maintain  that  labor  has  no  moral  quality  at  all. 
Every  function  in  social  work  which  is  useful  to  society 
is  just  as  meritorious  in  every  way  as  any  other;  each 
being  suitable  and  an  object  of  choice  to  the  person  who 
performs  it.  The  moral  quality  depends  on  the  way  in 
which  it  is  performed.  The  social  estimate  and  the 
personal  worth  which  should  be  ascribed  to  social  func- 
tions depends  on  the  way  in  which  the  man  we  have  in 
mind  does  his  duty.  It  is  not  capable  of  generalization, 
and  there  is  no  reason  for  generalizing  it. 

The  educational  value  of  different  social  functions  is 
equal,  and  the  degree  of  human  perfection  which  can  be 
got  out  of  them  is  equal.   It  develops  a  man  in  all  moral 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  193 

excellence,  and  in  all  that  vague  "elevation"  which 
plays  such  a  prominent  part  in  social  speculation  just 
as  much  to  be  a  good  and  faithful  hod-carrier  as  to  be  a 
good  and  faithful  statesman. 

Labor  does  not  brutalize  —  the  distinction  between 
manual  and  other  labor  in  this  respect  is  invalid.  The 
people  who  are  accustomed  to  factory  work  are  not  con- 
scious of  the  hardships  which  a  literary  man  may  easily 
imagine  that  they  must  feel  in  it,  any  more  than  other 
men  are  conscious  of  hardship  in  the  confinement  of  the 
editorial  sanctum  or  the  laboratory.  It  is  only  in  litera- 
ture or  in  the  semi-loafer  class  that  we  find  people  actu- 
ally reflecting  and  moralizing  and  complaining  about 
whether  the  way  in  which  they  get  their  living  is  irksome. 
It  is  overwork  which  is  brutalizing,  and  it  is  immate- 
rial whether  it  is  manual  or  intellectual  work;  but,  as 
I  said  at  the  beginning,  it  is  rarely  that  a  man  who  is 
really  overworked  is  in  a  position  to  say  freely  whether 
he  will  submit  to  it  and  be  brutalized  or  not.  Probably 
that  is  the  reason  why  so  few  of  that  class  pay  any  atten- 
tion to  the  discussion,  or  ever  make  any  complaint. 

Liberty  and  Machinery 

A  great  deal  of  stress  is  often  laid  on  the  assumed 
fact  that  men  who  labor,  at  least  in  manual  occupations, 
are  paid  for  their  nerve  and  sinew,  and  inferences  are 
deduced  from  this  assertion  of  fact  which  are  believed 
to  establish  especial  hardship  for  that  class  of  persons. 

I  am  not  able  to  find  any  case  whatever,  at  the  present 
time,  in  which  a  human  being  is  paid  for  anything  but 
intelligence.  It  may  be  that  some  one  can  bring  for- 
ward a  case;  if  so,  I  should  be  interested  to  see  it.  Any 
mere  exertion  of  animal  energy  can  be  converted  into 


194       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESASYS 

pounds  of  coal,  and  can  be  supplanted  by  steam.  The 
limitations  and  conditions  are,  however,  that  the  task 
to  be  done  must  present  uniform  requirements  over  a 
considerable  extent  of  time  or  place,  so  that  it  may  be 
economically  possible  to  apply  machinery  without  intel- 
ligence.    Some  examples  will  make  this  point  clear. 

We  see  men  employed  in  shoveling  and  carrying  coal 
from  the  side-walk  into  the  cellar.  Are  they  paid  for  pure 
energy,  or  for  intelligence?  If  it  was  the  fact  that  the 
coal-bins  of  all  houses  were  built  in  the  same  shape  and 
in  the  same  position  relatively  to  the  sidewalk,  then 
coal  carts  could  be  fitted  with  apparatus  for  passing  the 
coal  into  the  bin  without  any  shoveling  or  carrying. 
In  fact,  carts  have  been  invented,  and  are  in  use,  which 
do  this  in  that  great  number  of  cases  where  the  position 
and  shape  of  the  bins  conform  to  a  general  plan  of  house 
construction.  Or,  if  coal  had  to  be  put  into  the  cellar 
every  few  days,  apparatus  could  be  arranged  for  each 
house,  in  spite  of  differences  of  construction,  to  put  it 
in  without  hand  labor.  In  fact,  therefore,  at  the  present 
time,  the  services  of  the  coal-heavers  are  required  to 
adapt  the  task  to  the  varying  circumstances  of  the  dif- 
ferent cases;  that  is,  to  apply  intelligence  where  it  can- 
not be  dispensed  with. 

Another  case,  familiar  to  our  notice,  in  which  human 
beings  expend  much  nerve  and  muscular  energy,  is  in 
hod-carrying.  Steam  hod-hoisters  are  familiar,  but  it 
is  obvious  that  their  applicability  and  utility  is  limited 
to  the  cases  where  a  large  building  is  to  be  constructed 
at  one  spot;  otherwise  it  does  not  pay  to  put  up  the 
apparatus.  Therefore  the  case  is  that  the  task  can  be 
reduced  to  routine  and  machinery  can  be  applied  to  it, 
if  the  amount  of  it  is  sufficient,  within  the  limits  of  time 
and  space,  to  give  the  machine  simply  machine  work  to 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  195 

do,  namely,  the  plodding  repetition  of  a  set  operation. 
In  other  cases  the  man  does  the  work  because  he  must 
use  his  intelligence  all  the  time  to  produce  the  ever- 
changing  application  which  is  called  for. 

A  steam  shovel  will  transfer  sand  or  gravel  from  the 
bank  at  a  rate  to  defy  the  competition  of  men,  so  long 
as  the  task  is  to  transfer  it  in  the  same  way,  or  within 
narrow  limits;  but  a  machine  to  apply  steam-power  to 
the  excavation  of  a  trench  for  a  sewer,  through  hard  soil 
and  under  constantly  varying  conditions,  is  hardly 
imaginable.  Here,  therefore,  we  find  the  human  power 
almost  unrivaled. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  find  in  mills  and  factories 
machines  which,  as  the  saying  is,  "can  almost  talk." 
They  perform  very  complicated  operations  with  per- 
fection, provided  only  the  task  is  to  be  repeated  with- 
out limit  of  time,  in  some  process  of  manufacture.  Hence 
the  machines  and  the  power  are  all  the  time  invading 
the  domain  of  intelligence,  wherever  the  task  can  be  put 
in  the  mechanical  form,  and  made  to  comply  with  the 
mechanical  conditions;  the  man  stands  by  and  sup- 
plies the  intelligence  at  the  points  where  the  intelligence 
is  still  indispensable.  Some  machines  seem  more  intel- 
ligent than  some  men,  but  no  machine  can  "feed  itself" 
with  new  material.  The  operations  of  the  machine  are 
often  immeasurably  more  worthy  of  intelligence  than 
the  operation  of  going  after  more  material  and  feeding 
it  into  the  machine,  but  not  always  so;  for  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  machine  and  the  material,  that  the  machine 
may  do  its  work  well,  is  often  no  trifling  demand  on 
intelligence. 

I  believe,  therefore,  that  it  is  a  correct  statement  of 
the  case  that,  where  the  task  calls  for  brute  force  only, 
the  steam  or  other  engine  supplants  the  man,  and  that 


196       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

where  the  man  holds  the  field  because  his  intelligence 
is  indispensable,  it  is  his  intelligence  that  is  paid  for. 
If  it  is  indispensable,  it  is  also  well  remunerated  in  pro- 
portion to  the  time  and  capital  which  must  be  spent  in 
preparing  for  the  task,  while  great  physical  vigor,  if  nec- 
essary, helps  to  make  a  natural  monopoly.  This  is  why 
the  modern  laborer  constantly  turns  to  demand  the  help 
of  machinery  wherever  it  can  possibly  be  applied,  and 
the  notion  is  finding  especial  illustration  just  now  in  the 
case  of  the  stokers  in  modern  steamships  of  high  speed. 
Either  machinery  must  be  applied  where  machinery 
hardly  seems  applicable  at  all,  or  the  men  who  bring  the 
requisite  intelligence  to  bear  under  very  hard  conditions, 
together  with  the  mere  mechanical  energy  whose  market 
value  is  that  of  a  few  pounds  of  the  coal  they  handle, 
will  obtain  a  remuneration  indefinitely  greater  than  that 
of  the  general  class  or  workmen  to  which  they  belong, 
or  with  which  they  have  hitherto  been  classed. 

Whether  this  view  of  the  matter  can  be  maintained 
as  absolutely  correct  or  not,  it  certainly  has  enough 
truth  in  it  to  show  that  the  current  assertions  about 
the  hapless  position  of  the  man  who  "has  only  his  labor 
to  sell"  rest  upon  very  superficial  and  hasty  knowledge 
of  the  case. 

On  the  one  hand,  then,  it  is  true  that  that  man  is 
unfortunate  who,  in  the  world  of  steam  and  machinery, 
can  do  nothing  which  steam  and  machinery  cannot  do; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  true  also  that  steam  and 
machinery  are  a  grand  emancipation  for  the  man  who 
will  raise  himself  above  them  and  leam  to  use  them  by 
his  intelligence. 

If  I  apprehend  this  matter  aright,  then  it  is  only  an- 
other case  of  a  general  principle  which  I  have  already 
tried  to  expound:   that  every  new  power  is  a  new  chance. 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  197 

but  that  every  chance  brings  with  it  a  twofold  possibility. 
If  we  seize  it  and  use  it  rightly,  we  go  up  by  means  of  it; 
if  we  fail  to  understand  it,  or  miss  it,  or  abuse  it,  we  fall 
just  so  much  lower  on  account  of  it.  If  we  Hve  in  a  world 
of  machinery  and  steam,  and  cannot  learn  to  command 
machinery  and  steam,  we  shall  count  for  no  more  than  a 
handful  of  coal;  if  we  rise  to  the  occasion,  and  by  work 
and  study  make  steam  and  machinery  our  servants,  we 
can  be  emancipated  from  drudgery  and  from  the  wear 
of  the  nerves  and  the  muscles.  The  true  hardship  of 
our  time  is  that  this  alternative  is  forced  upon  us  over 
and  over  again  with  pitiless  repetition. 

In  a  wider  and  more  philosophical  view  of  the  mat- 
ter, every  new  application  of  science  and  every  improve- 
ment in  art,  is  a  case  of  advancing  organization.  It 
always  comes  with  two  faces  —  one,  its  effect  on  what  is 
and  what  has  been;  the  other,  its  effect  on  what  may  be. 
Its  effect  on  what  is  and  has  been  is  destructive;  hence 
the  doctrine  that  "the  better  is  the  greatest  foe  of  the 
good."  Its  effect  on  what  may  be  is  creative;  results 
before  impossible  are  now  brought  within  reach.  The 
cost  is  the  sacrifice  of  the  old  and  the  strain  to  rise  to  the 
command  of  the  new. 

The  effect  on  our  social  life  of  a  misapprehension  of 
the  relations  between  modem  arts  and  wages  or  any 
other  feature  of  the  economic  organization  is  trifling 
as  compared  with  the  effects  of  misapprehension  of  the 
moral  and  educating  effects  of  the  same  arts.  It  is 
asserted  that  there  is  a  moral  loss  in  the  sacrifice  of  skill, 
and  "all-round"  efficiency,  and  dexterity  of  manipula- 
tion. The  moral  and  educating  effect  on  the  race  of  a 
constant  demand  to  hold  the  powers  alert  and  on  strain 
to  understand  and  keep  up  with  the  "march  of  progress," 
transcends  immeasurably  any  similar  moral  or  educating 


198       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

effect  to  which  men  have  before  been  subjected.  He 
who  will  may  see  the  proofs  of  it  on  every  side,  and  on 
all  classes;  where  are  the  dull  boors,  the  stupid  peas- 
antry, the  rollicking  journeymen  (in  the  original  sense 
of  the  word)  of  former  times?  There  never  was  a  time 
when  a  man  had  so  much  reason  to  be  a  man,  or  so  much 
to  make  him  a  man  as  he  has  now. 

Those  then  who  ascribe  liberty  to  the  wise  resolutions 
of  political  conventions,  and  set  it  in  opposition  to  the 
industrial  conditions  of  modem  life,  make  a  woeful 
mistake.  If  we  have  any  liberty,  it  is  power  over  nature 
which  has  put  it  within  our  reach,  and  our  power  over 
nature  is  due  to  science  and  art.  It  is  they  which  have 
emancipated  us,  but  they  have  not  done  it  without  exact- 
ing a  price,  nor  without  opening  to  us  new  vistas  of 
effort  and  desire;  and  liberty  is  still  at  the  end  of  the 
vista,  where  it  always  has  been  and  always  will  be. 

The  Disappointment  of  Liberty 

As  we  probe  the  idea  of  liberty  on  one  side  and  an- 
other, distinctions  are  brought  to  light.  First  we  have 
revolutionary  or  anarchistic  liberty,  the  notion  of  which 
is  that  a  free  man  is  emancipated  from  the  struggle  for 
existence,  and  assured  everything  he  needs  (wants),  by 
virtue  of  his  liberty,  on  terms  which  he  shall  not  regard 
as  onerous.  Secondly,  we  have  personal  liberty,  which 
is  the  chance  to  fight  the  struggle  for  existence  for  one's 
self,  to  the  best  of  one's  will  and  ability,  within  the 
bounds  of  one's  personal  circumstances,  for  which  other 
men  are  not  responsible,  without  any  risk  of  being  com- 
pelled to  fight  the  struggle  for  anybody  else,  and  with- 
out any  claim  to  the  assistance  of  anybody  else  in  one's 
own.     Third,  we  have  civil   liberty,  which  is  a  status 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  199 

produced  by  laws  and  civil  institutions,  in  which  the  per- 
sonal liberty  of  individuals  is  secured;  it  is  a  status  in 
which  all  rights  and  duties  are  in  equilibrium. 

Objection  has  been  made  to  the  second  and  third  defi- 
nitions that  a  man  might  steal,  by  way  of  liberty  to  pur- 
sue the  struggle  for  existence  on  his  own  behalf.  The 
objection  only  illustrates  the  difficulty  of  this  order  of 
discussion.  It  is  conceivable  that  laws  and  institutions 
might  tolerate  stealing,  for  they  have  done  it;  but  as 
there  can  be  no  robber  without  a  robbed,  and  as  the 
definition  must  apply  equally  to  all  individuals  in  the 
society,  the  definition  absolutely  excluded  stealing  or 
other  invasion  of  personal  rights.  The  objection  is 
therefore  futile,  and  does  not  call  for  any  modification 
of  the  definition. 

As  we  go  on  with  the  discussion,  we  also  see  that  in 
one  view  of  the  case  all  human  strength  seems  to  lie  in 
liberty,  while  in  another  view  it  all  seems  to  lie  in  dis- 
cipline. At  this  point  a  pitfall  lies  on  either  side.  Anar- 
chists and  Nihilists,  accepting  the  notion  that  in  liberty 
is  all  strength,  elevate  revolution  to  the  highest  func- 
tion as  a  redeeming  and  reforming  force;  to  destroy  and 
tear  down  becomes  a  policy  of  wisdom  and  growth; 
everything  which  is  is  in  the  way;  everything  which  has 
grown  as  an  institution  is  an  obstacle  to  that  ideal  of 
primitive  purity  and  simplicity,  combined  with  liberty, 
to  which  we  would  be  eager  to  return.  Hence  liberty 
of  the  first  species  is  sought,  in  practise,  by  universal 
negation  and  reckless  destruction.  But  society  cannot 
sustain  itself  without  stringent  organization  —  organi- 
zation which  coerces  its  members.  Liberty,  on  this 
view,  is  therefore  social  suicide,  for  it  is  war  of  the 
society  against  the  most  essential  conditions  of  its  own 
existence. 


200       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

On  the  other  side,  the  notion  that  discipline  is  the 
secret  of  all  strength  is  easily  convertible  into  the  notion 
that  subordination,  submission,  obedience  to  one's  fel- 
low-men, is  the  secret  of  all  strength.  That  is  the  fallacy 
of  authoritative  absolutism  in  all  its  forms.  A  man 
without  discipline  is  a  boor  and  a  barbarian,  but  a  man 
who  has  submitted  his  will  to  another  mortal's  will  has 
broken  the  spring  of  moral  power.  The  effect  of  sound 
discipline  is  that  it  never  breaks  the  spring,  but 
strengthens  it,  because  the  individual  character  reacts 
with  new  energy  on  account  of  new  moral  forces  which 
are  brought  into  play,  viz.,  critical  reflection  and  inde- 
pendent conviction.  The  question  which  arises  at  every 
new  crisis  in  which  a  man  is  freed  from  control  is  this: 
if  others  let  go  of  you  will  you  take  hold  of  yourself?  A 
spoiled  boy  or  man  is  one  in  whom  a  succession  of  these 
crises  has  been  decided  the  wrong  way. 

At  this  point  the  moral  problem  comes  in.  It  con- 
sists in  the  combination  of  the  two  elements  of  liberty 
and  discipline;  and  they  must  be  combined  according 
to  circumstances.  The  problem  is  not,  therefore,  ca- 
pable of  definite  or  final  solution;  it  defies  analysis  and 
rule.  Like  other  moral  problems,  it  is  only  a  fragment 
of  the  great  problem  of  living. 

The  more  widely  and  thoroughly  we  explore  the  field 
of  social  fact  and  relations  in  which  liberty  falls,  the  more 
are  we  convinced  that  liberty  in  the  sense  of  the  first  of 
the  above  definitions  is  the  grandest  of  human  delusions. 
That  notion  of  liberty  is  a  part  of  the  great  dream  that 
our  situation  on  earth  is,  to  a  great  extent,  a  matter  of 
our  own  choice  and  decision,  or,  as  the  current  fashion 
expresses  it,  that  social  questions  are  ethical.  With 
the  growth  of  social  science  the  old  wrangle  about  free 
will  has  been  transferred  to  this  domain,  and  the  ques- 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  201 

tion  whether  we  make  our  social  phenomena  or  our 
social  phenomena  make  us,  whether  the  man  is  a  func- 
tion of  the  state  or  the  state  is  a  function  of  the 
man,  is  the  question  whether  social  science  can  throw 
off  the  thraldom  of  metaphysics  or  not.  At  present  we 
have  to  note  that  our  studies  of  Uberty,  in  all  its  phases 
and  applications,  have  forced  us  again  and  again  to  ob- 
serve that  there  is  no  real  liberty  but  that  which  is 
an  affair  of  history,  law,  and  institutions.  It  is  there- 
fore positive,  and  so  is  capable  of  historical  study  and 
scientific  analysis. 

The  dream  of  liberty  has  taken  possession  of  men's 
minds  within  the  last  century  to  the  exclusion  of  other 
dreams  except  that  of  equality  —  and  with  good  rea- 
son, for  if  the  dream  of  emancipation  from  the  heavy 
weight  of  the  struggle  for  existence  were  realizable  it 
would  supersede  all  other  dreams.  Then,  again,  there 
has  been  an  unprecedented  opening  of  new  chances  to 
mankind,  which  chances  have  permitted  the  human 
race  at  the  same  time  to  increase  in  numbers  and  to 
advance  in  comfort  of  living.  Political  institutions  have 
advanced  at  the  same  time  and  have  been  assumed  to 
be  the  cause  of  the  advance  in  average  comfort.  This 
claim  has  been  almost  universally  admitted,  and  has 
produced  the  natural  inference  that  political  devices 
can  do  all  for  us  that  we  can  possibly  desire.  This  is 
the  latest  Utopianism,  and  it  surpasses  all  previous 
phases  of  Utopianism  in  piu-e  silliness.  Then,  again, 
any  period  of  advancing  comfort  is  siu-e  to  be  one  of 
advancing  sentimentalism;  men  who  are  struggling 
each  for  himself,  under  the  pressure  of  dire  necessity, 
will  spare  little  sympathy  on  each  other  —  it  is  when 
they  are  at  ease  that  they  have  sympathy  to  spare. 
Distress  dissolves  the  social  bond;    comfort  strengthens 


202       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

it.  All  these  things,  then,  have  concurred  within  a 
century  to  raise  and  intensify  the  dream  of  liberty. 

It  is  not  strange  that  this  movement  has  issued  and 
is  issuing  in  disappointment,  neither  is  it  strange  that 
the  disappointment  should  be  vented  on  constitutional 
liberty,  the  only  true  liberty,  and  never  should  reach 
the  delusive  and  fallacious  liberty  at  all.  Human  his- 
tory is  full  of  just  such  errors  as  that.  The  last  thing 
in  the  world  to  which  we  attribute  our  misfortunes  is 
our  pet  delusions;   they  stand  firm  through  all. 

I  say  that  it  is  not  strange  that  the  dream  of  liberty 
should  issue  in  disappointment  and  revolt,  because  this 
liberty  has  been  promised  as  a  cause  and  guarantee  of 
bliss  on  earth,  and  it  has  failed  to  give  what  it  promised. 
Civil  and  personal  liberty  help  on  the  evolution  of  soci- 
ety; they  produce  growth  of  individuals  and  societies. 
They  are  not  revolutionary,  but  are  hostile  to  revolution; 
they  stand  related  to  the  revolutionary  liberty  as  the 
truth  to  the  caricature.  It  stands,  therefore,  as  one  of 
the  tasks  before  our  social  science  to  distinguish  these 
two  notions  of  liberty  from  each  other  as  sharply  as 
possible,  and  while  manifesting  the  strength  and  value  of 
the  one  to  show  the  error  and  falsity  of  the  other. 

Everything,  however,  which  is  evolutionary  aims  to 
produce  the  utmost  possible,  in  the  next  stage,  out  of 
the  antecedents  which  lie  in  the  last  stage.  Evolution- 
ary methods,  therefore,  have  nothing  to  do  with  ideals; 
they  aim  always  at  the  best  possible  under  the  circum- 
stances. Under  such  methods,  therefore,  there  can  be 
no  dreams  of  universal  bliss  at  all;  neither  can  there 
be  hope  in  brutal  destruction,  or  unintelligent  negation, 
for  any  sober  reform. 

It  is  most  natural  that  this  reduction  of  all  the  enthu- 
siastic dreams  of  the  last  century  to  the  test  of  positive 


LIBERTY  AND  RESPONSIBILITY  203 

truth  should  be  regarded  as  "cold"  and  unsympathetic; 
that  a  wider  and  wider  gulf  should  open  between  "eth- 
ical aspirations  "  and  the  products  of  scientific  method 
applied  to  social  phenomena;  and  that  the  point  at  which 
the  cleft  opens  should  be  the  doctrine  of  liberty.  Any 
student  of  social  science  who  accepts  the  anarchistic 
notion  of  liberty  will  find  himself  lost  in  the  new  forms 
of  the  mist  of  free-will.  No  such  notion  of  liberty  can 
be  tolerated  in  a  scientific  discussion,  but  only  that 
notion  which,  being  a  product  of  social  growth,  is  within 
the  field  of  the  science  itself.  On  every  ground  and  at 
every  point  the  domain  of  social  science  must  be  defended 
against  the  alleged  authority  of  ethical  dicta,  which  can- 
not be  subjected  to  any  verification  whatever. 


FANTASIES  AND  FACTS 


SOME   POINTS   IN  THE   NEW   SOCIAL   CREED 

As  time  runs  on  it  becomes  more  and  more  obvious 
that  this  generation  has  raised  up  for  itseK  social  prob- 
lems which  it  is  not  competent  to  solve,  and  that  this 
inability  may  easily  prove  fatal  to  it.  We  have  been 
boasting  of  the  achievements  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  viewing  ourselves  and  our  circumstances  in  an 
altogether  rose-colored  medium.  We  have  not  had  a 
correct  standard  for  comparing  ourselves  with  our  prede- 
cessors on  earth,  nor  for  judging  soberly  what  we  have 
done  or  what  men  can  do.  We  have  encouraged  our- 
selves in  such  demands  upon  nature  or  human  life  that  we 
are  ready  to  declare  our  civilization  a  failure  because 
we  find  that  it  cannot  give  us  what  we  have  decided  that 
we  want.  We  have  so  lost  our  bearings  in  the  conditions 
of  earthly  existence  that  we  resent  any  stringency  or 
limitation  as  an  insult  to  our  humanity,  for  which  some- 
body ought  to  be  responsible  to  us.  We  draw  up  pro- 
nunciamentos,  every  paragraph  of  which  begins  with: 
"we  demand,"  without  noticing  the  difference  between 
the  things  which  we  can  expect  from  the  society  in 
which  we  live,  and  those  which  we  must  get  either  from 
ourselves  or  from  God  and  nature. 

We  believe  that  we  can  bring  about  a  complete  trans- 
formation in  the  economic  organization  of  society,  and 
not  have  any  incidental  social  and  political  questions 
arise  which  will  make  us  great  difficulty,  or  that,  if  such 
questions  arise,  they  can  all  be  succinctly  solved  by 
saying:   "Let  the  State  attend  to  it";     "Make  a  bureau 


208       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  appoint  inspectors";  "Pass  a  law."  But  the  plain 
fact  is  that  the  new  time  presents  manifold  and  con- 
stantly varying  facts  and  factors.  It  is  complicated, 
heterogeneous,  full  of  activity,  so  that  its  phases  are 
constantly  changing.  Legislation  and  state  action  are 
stiff,  rigid,  inelastic,  incapable  of  adaptation  to  cases; 
they  are  never  adopted  except  under  stress  of  the  per- 
ception of  some  one  phase  which  has,  for  some  reason  or 
other,  arrested  attention.  Hence,  the  higher  the  organ- 
ization of  society,  the  more  mischievous  legislative  reg- 
ulation is  sure  to  be.  Oiu*  discussions,  therefore,  only 
show  how  far  we  are  from  having  a  social  science  ade- 
quate to  bear  its  share  of  human  interests  by  the  side  of 
the  other  sciences  on  which  human  welfare  now  depends, 
and,  also,  how  great  is  our  peril  for  lack  of  a  harmonious 
development  on  this  side. 

We  think  that  security  and  justice  are  simple  and  easy 
things  which  go  without  the  saying,  and  need  only  be 
recognized  to  be  had  and  enjoyed;  we  do  not  know  that 
security  is  a  thing  which  men  have  never  yet  succeeded 
in  establishing.  History  is  full  of  instruction  for  us  if 
we  will  go  to  it  for  instruction;  but  if  we  go  to  it  for  in- 
formation, being  unable  to  interpret  its  lessons  or  its 
oracles,  we  shall  get  nothing  but  whims  and  fads.  Now 
history  is  one  long  story  of  efforts  to  get  some  civil  organ- 
ization which  could  give  security  over  an  indefinite  period 
of  time.  But  no  such  civil  organization  has  yet  been 
found;  we  are  as  far  from  it  as  ever.  The  organization 
itself  has  eaten  up  the  substance  of  mankind.  The  govern- 
ment of  a  Roman  Emperor,  a  Czar,  a  Sultan,  or  a  Napo- 
leon, has  been  only  a  raid  of  a  lot  of  hungry  sycophants 
upon  the  subject  mass;  the  aristocracy  of  Venice  and 
other  city  states  has  been  only  a  plutocratic  oligarchy, 
using  the  state  as  a  means  to  its  own  selfish  ends;  democ- 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  CREED  209 

racy  has  never  yet  been  tried  enough  to  know  what  it 
will  do,  but  with  Jacobinism,  communism,  and  social 
democracy  lying  in  wait  for  it  on  one  side,  and  plutoc- 
racy on  the  other,  its  promise  is  not  greater  than  that 
of  the  old  forms.  It  remains  to  be  proved  that  democ- 
racy possesses  any  stability  and  that  it  can  guarantee 
rights. 

We  think  that  justice  is  a  simple  idea,  comprehen- 
sible by  the  light  of  nature,  when  justice  is  really  one  of 
the  most  refined  and  delicate  notions  which  we  have  to 
use,  and  one  which  requires  the  most  perfect  training  for 
its  comprehension.  We  think  that  it  is  a  thing  which 
we  need  only  demand  of  our  political  institutions,  in  order 
to  get  it,  when  in  fact  the  best  institutions  ever  yet  in- 
vented owe  their  greatest  glory  to  the  fact  that  they  have 
succeeded  in  but  remotely  approximating  to  it. 

We  think  that  liberty  and  freedom  are  matters  of  met- 
aphysics, and  are  to  be  obtained  by  resolutions  about 
what  is  true.  We  are  impatient  of  historical  growth 
and  steady  improvement.  We  are  irritated  because  our 
ideals  fail,  and  we  propose  to  throw  away  all  our  birth- 
right of  civil  liberty,  because  a  man,  even  in  a  free  coim- 
try,  cannot  have  everything  that  he  wants.  We  are 
inheritors  of  civil  institutions  which  it  has  cost  genera- 
tions of  toil  and  pain  to  build  up,  and  we  are  invited  to 
throw  them  away  because  they  do  not  fit  the  social 
dogmas  of  some  of  our  prophets. 

We  think  that,  if  this  world  does  not  suit  us,  it  ought 
to  be  corrected  to  our  satisfaction,  and  that,  if  we  see 
any  social  phenomenon  which  does  not  suit  our  notions, 
there  should  be  a  remedy  found  at  once.  A  collection 
of  these  complaints  and  criticisms,  however,  assembled 
from  the  literature  of  the  day,  would  show  the  most 
heterogeneous,  contradictory,  and  fantastic  notions. 


210       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

We  think  that  this  is  a  world  in  which  we  are  limited 
by  our  wants,  not  by  our  powers;  by  our  ideals,  not  by 
our  antecedents. 

We  think  that  we  are  resisting  oppression  from  other 
men,  when  we  are  railing  against  the  hardships  of  life 
on  this  earth.  Inasmuch  as  we  are  powerless  against 
nature,  we  propose  to  turn  and  rend  each  other. 

We  think  that  capital  comes  of  itself,  and  would  all 
be  here  just  the  same,  no  matter  what  regulations  we 
might  make  about  the  custody,  use,  and  enjoyment  of  it. 

We  demand  a  political  remedy,  when  what  we  want  is 
more  productive  power,  which  we  must  find  in  ourselves, 
if  anywhere.  We  want  more  power  over  nature,  but 
we  think  that  steam  and  machinery  are  our  enemies  and 
the  cause  of  all  the  trouble. 

We  think  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  liberty  from  the 
conditions  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  that  we  can 
abolish  monopoly,  aristocracy,  poverty,  and  other  things 
which  do  not  please  our  taste. 

We  think  that  we  can  impair  the  rights  of  landlords, 
creditors,  employers,  and  capitalists,  and  yet  maintain 
all  other  rights  intact. 

We  think  that,  although  A  has  greatly  improved  his 
position  in  half  a  lifetime,  that  is  nothing,  because  B, 
in  the  same  time,  has  become  a  millionaire. 

We  throw  all  our  attention  on  the  utterly  idle  ques- 
tion whether  A  has  done  as  well  as  B,  when  the  only 
question  is  whether  A  has  done  as  well  as  he  could. 

We  think  that  competition  produces  great  inequalities, 
but  that  stealing  or  alms-giving  does  not. 

We  think  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  "monopoly"; 
a  simple,  plain,  definite,  and  evil  thing,  which  everybody 
can  understand  and  prescribe  remedies  for.  We  believe 
in  the  "Banquet  of  Life"  and  the  "Boon  of  Nature," 


THE  NEW  SOCIAL  CREED  211 

although  nature  never  utters  but  one  speech  to  us:  *'I 
will  yield  you  a  subsistence,  if  you  know  how  to  extort 
it  from  me." 

We  think  that  we  can  have  an  age  of  steam  and  elec- 
tricity, and  not  put  any  more  brains  into  the  task  of 
life  in  it  than  our  grandfathers  put  into  living  in  an  age 
of  agricultural  simplicity. 

We  find  it  a  hardship  to  be  prudent  and  to  be  forced 
to  think;  therefore  we  think  that  those  who  have  been 
prudent  for  themselves  should  be  forced  to  be  so  for 
others. 

We  think  that  we  can  beget  children  without  care  or 
responsibility,  and  that  our  liberty  to  marry  when  we 
choose  has  nothing  to  do  with  our  position  in  the  "house 
of  have"  or  the  "house  of  want." 

We  started  out  a  century  ago  with  the  notion  that 
there  are  some  "rights  of  man";  we  have  been  trying 
ever  since  to  formulate  a  statement  of  what  they  are. 
Although  these  attempts  have  been  made  on  purely 
a  priori  grounds,  and  without  the  limitations  which  would 
be  imposed  by  an  investigation  of  the  facts  of  our  exist- 
ence on  earth,  nevertheless  they  have  all  failed.  So 
far  their  outcome  is:  every  man  has  a  right  to  enjoy; 
if  he  fails  of  it,  he  has  a  right  to  destroy. 


AN  EXAMINATION  OF  A  NOBLE  SENTIMENT 

A  NOBLE  sentiment  is  a  very  noble  thing  when  it  is 
genuine.  A  soul  which  would  not  throb  in  response  to 
a  noble  sentiment,  if  it  were  genuine,  would  prove  that 
it  was  base  and  corrupt.  On  the  other  hand,  a  noble 
sentiment,  if  it  is  not  genuine,  is  one  of  the  most  cor- 
rupting things  in  the  world.  The  habit  of  entertaining 
bogus  sentiments  of  a  plausible  sound,  deprives  both 
mind  and  heart  of  sterling  sense  and  healthful  emotion. 
It  is  no  psychological  enigma  that  Robespierre,  who  was 
a  hero  of  the  eighteenth-century  sensibilitS,  should  have 
administered  the  Reign  of  Terror.  People  who  gush  are 
often  most  impervious  to  real  appeals,  and  to  genuine 
emotion.  It  therefore  seems  that  we  must  be  on  our 
guard  against  pretended  noble  sentiments,  as  against 
very  dangerous  pitfalls,  and  test  them  to  see  whether 
they  are  genuine  or  not. 

The  sentiment  which  I  now  propose  to  examine  is  this: 
that  we  ought  to  see  to  it  that  every  one  has  an  existence 
worthy  of  a  human  being,  or  to  keep  it  in  the  form  in 
which  it  is  offered,  a  menschenwiirdiges  Dasein.  It  is 
not  a  matter  of  accident  that  it  is  stated  in  German. 
A  noble  sentiment  often  loses  poetry  and  transcenden- 
tal solemnity  to  such  an  extent,  when  translated  into 
everyday  English,  that  it  might  seem  like  begging  the 
question  of  its  truth  and  value  to  translate  it. 

The  first  question  is :  what  is  an  existence  worthy  of  a 
human  being?  The  hod-cartier,  who  is  earning  a  dollar 
a  day,  will  say  that  it  is  what  he  could  get  for  a  dollar 


EXAMINATION  OF  A  NOBLE  SENTIMENT    213 

and  a  half;  the  mechanic  at  two  dollars  will  say  that  it 
would  cost  three;  a  man  whose  income  is  a  thousand  dol- 
lars will  say  that  it  costs  fifteen  hundred.  I  once  heard 
a  man,  whose  salary  was  twelve  thousand  dollars,  speak 
of  five  thousand  a  year  as  misery.  A  menschenwiirdiges 
Daseiriy  therefore,  at  the  first  touch  gives  us  the  first 
evidence  of  something  wrong.  It  sounds  like  a  concrete 
and  definite  thing,  but  it  is  not  such;  a  menschenvmr' 
diges  Dasein  is  the  most  shifting  and  slippery  notion  which 
the  human  mind  can  try  to  conceive.  In  general  it  is 
about  fifty  per  cent  more  than  each  one  of  us  is  getting 
now,  which  would,  for  a  time,  mean  happiness,  prosper- 
ity, and  weKare  to  us  all.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  also, 
that  most  of  the  people  who,  not  in  their  own  opinion, 
but  in  that  of  their  neighbors,  have  not  a  menschemoiir- 
diges  Dasein  are  those  who  do  not  like  that  kind  of  an 
existence  or  want  it,  but  have  turned  their  backs  upon 
it,  and  are  in  fact  rather  more  contented  than  any  other 
class  of  people  with  their  situation  as  they  are  now. 

The  next  question  is:  for  how  many  people  must  a 
menschenwurdiges  Dasein  be  provided?  The  provision 
of  such  an  existence  is  the  first  necessity  which  meets 
one  of  us  when  he  comes  to  understand  the  world  in 
which  he  lives,  —  that  is,  he  has  to  earn  his  living,  — 
for  the  exceptions,  those  who  inherit  a  living,  are  so  few 
that  they  may  be  disregarded  by  the  rest  of  us  on  whom 
this  proposed  duty  will  fall.  The  task  of  earning  a  liv- 
ing is  found,  generally,  to  be  a  somewhat  heavy  one, 
chiefly  for  the  reason,  as  shown  in  the  former  paragraph, 
that  a  man's  definition  of  a  decent  living  will  not  stay 
fixed  long  enough  for  him  to  realize  it.  As  soon  as  he 
thinks  that  he  sees  his  way  to  it  he  wants  to  marry;  then 
he  becomes  responsible  for  the  menschenwurdiges  Dasein 
of  a  number  of  other  persons.     His  whole  energy,  his 


214       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

whole  life  long,  rarely  suffices  to  do  more  than  meet  this 
obligation.  Such  is  the  fate  of  the  man  who  tries  to 
guarantee  a  menschenwiirdiges  Dasein  to  himself,  his 
wife,  and  his  children.  But  the  man  who  is  to  be 
provided  with  such  an  existence,  under  the  new  arrange- 
ment proposed,  will  not  have  any  such  difficulty  to  con- 
tend with;  he  is  to  have  a  living  secured  to  him  by  the 
state,  or  the  social  reformers,  or  somebody  else.  His 
wife  and  children  will  obviously  have  as  good  a  claim  to 
a  menschenwiirdiges  Dasein  as  he;  their  support  will 
therefore  cause  him  no  anxiety  and  no  burden.  There- 
fore this  class  of  persons  will  increase  with  great  rapidity. 
They  are,  of  course,  all  those  who  have  neglected  or 
refused  to  win  a  menschenwiirdiges  Dasein  for  themselves; 
and  whenever  it  is  determined  that  somebody  else  shall 
give  it  to  them,  it  is  provided  that  their  number  shall 
multiply  indefinitely  and  forever. 

Furthermore,  in  all  these  propositions  the  fact  is  over- 
looked that  no  humanitarian  proposition  is  valid  unless 
it  is  applied  to  the  whole  human  race.  If  I  am  bound 
to  love  my  fellow-man,  it  is  for  reasons  which  apply  to 
Laplanders  and  Hottentots  just  as  much  as  to  my  neigh- 
bor across  the  street;  our  obligation  to  provide  a  men- 
schenwiirdiges Dasein  is  just  as  great  toward  Africans 
or  Mongolians  as  towards  Americans.  It  must  certainly 
be  as  wide  as  all  Menschen,  that  is,  all  human  beings. 
There  are  millions  of  people  on  the  globe  whose  mode 
of  life,  whose  Dasein,  is  far  below  that  of  the  most  miser- 
able wretch  in  the  United  States,  never  has  been  any  bet- 
ter than  it  is,  never  will  be  any  better  as  far  ahead  as 
anybody  can  see,  and  they  cannot  be  said  to  be  to  blame 
for  it.  It  is  true  that  they  do  not  know  that  they  are 
badly  off;  they  do  not  bother  their  heads  about  a  men- 
schenwiirdiges Dasein.      They  do  not  work  much  and 


EXAMINATION  OF  A  NOBLE  SENTIMENT    215 

they  are  quite  free  from  care  —  very  much  more  so  than 
the  average  American  taxpayer.  But,  if  we  are  to 
give  a  menschenwUrdiges  Dasein  to  those  who  have  not 
got  it,  just  because  they  have  not  got  it  (and  no  other 
reason  is  alleged  in  connection  with  the  proposition 
before  us),  then  the  persons  to  whom  I  have  referred 
have  a  very  much  stronger  claim,  for  they  are  very  much 
further  away  from  it. 

The  next  question  is:  what  will  be  the  effect  on  people 
of  securing  them  a  menschenwUrdiges  Dasein?  Plainly 
it  must  be  to  pauperize  them,  that  is,  to  take  away  aU 
hope  that  they  can  ever  win  such  an  existence  for  them- 
selves. If  not,  and  if  the  proposition  means  only  that 
we  hope  and  strive  to  make  our  community  as  prosper- 
ous as  possible,  and  to  give  everybody  in  it  as  good 
chances  as  possible,  then  that  is  just  what  we  are  trying 
to  do  now,  to  the  best  of  our  ability,  and  the  proposal 
is  only  an  impertinence;  it  interrupts  and  disturbs  us 
without  contributing  anything  to  the  matter  in  hand. 
Now  it  is  one  of  the  worst  social  errors  to  pauperize 
people;  it  demoralizes  them  through  and  through;  it 
ruins  their  personal  character  and  makes  them  socially 
harmful;  it  lowers  their  aims  and  makes  sure  that  they 
will  never  have  good  ones;  it  corrupts  their  family  life 
and  makes  sure  that  they  will  entail  sordid  and  imworthy 
principles  of  action  on  their  children.  If  any  argument 
could  be  brought  forward  for  an  attempt  to  secure  to 
every  one  an  existence  worthy  of  a  man,  it  would  be 
that,  in  that  way,  every  one  among  us  might  be  worthy 
to  be  a  human  being;  but,  whenever  the  attempt  is  made, 
the  only  result  will  be  that  those  who  get  an  existence 
worthy  of  a  human  being  in  that  way  are  sure  to  be 
morally  degraded  below  any  admissible  standard  of 
human  worth. 


216       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

The  next  question  is:  who  is  to  secure  the  menschen- 
wiirdiges  Dasein  to  the  aforesaid  persons?  Evidently 
it  can  only  be  those  who  have  already,  no  one  knows  by 
what  struggles  and  self-denial,  won  it  for  themselves. 
This  proposition,  like  all  the  others  of  the  class  to  which 
it  belongs,  proposes  to  smite  with  new  responsibilities, 
instead  of  rewards,  the  man  who  has  done  what  every 
one  ought  to  do.  We  are  told  what  fine  things  would 
happen  if  every  one  of  us  would  go  and  do  something  for 
the  welfare  of  somebody  else;  but  why  not  contemplate 
also  the  immense  gain  which  would  ensue  if  everybody 
would  do  something  for  himself?  The  latter  is  ever  so 
much  more  reasonable  than  the  former;  for  those  who 
are  now  taking  care  of  themselves  have  very  little 
strength  to  spare,  while  those  who  are  not  now  taking 
care  of  themselves  might  do  a  great  deal  more.  The  plan 
of  securing  to  those  who  have  not  a  menschenwiirdiges 
Dasein  that  blessing,  is  a  plan  for  leaving  the  latter  at 
ease  and  putting  more  load  on  the  former;  to  the  soci- 
ety, therefore,  it  is  doubly  destructive,  increasing  its 
burdens  and  wasting  its  resources  at  the  same  time. 

The  next  question  is:  what  means  are  to  be  used 
to  give  a  menschenwiirdiges  Dasein  to  everybody?  To 
this  there  is  no  answer;  we  are  left  to  conjecture.  The 
most  reasonable  conjecture  is  that  the  proponents  them- 
selves do  not  know;  they  have  not  made  up  their  minds; 
they  have  not  really  faced  the  question.  A  proposi- 
tion to  give  everybody  an  existence  worthy  of  a  human 
being,  without  a  specification  of  the  measures  by  which 
it  is  proposed  to  do  it,  is  like  a  proposition  to  make 
everybody  handsome. 

Our  analysis  has  therefore  shown  that  this  noble 
sentiment  is  simply  a  bathos. 


THE  BANQUET  OF  LITE 

In  1886  the  American  Social  Science  Association  pub- 
lished a  set  of  analytical  topics  covering  the  field  of 
social  science.  The  list  is  in  many  respects  remarkable, 
and  might  repay  the  labor  of  an  examination,  taking  it 
as  a  specimen  of  analysis  applied  to  social  phenomena, 
and  as  a  revelation  of  the  conception  of  social  science 
which  prevails  in  some  quarters.  Among  the  other 
topics  which  the  student  is  invited  to  discuss  is  this:  **The 
Banquet  of  Life,  a  Collation  or  an  Exclusive  Feast." 
There  is  here  a  pardonable  attempt  at  rhetoric.  It  is 
to  be  feared,  however,  that  the  student  may  be  misled  by 
the  word  "collation"  into  the  belief  that  the  antithesis 
which  is  suggested  is  that  between  something  cold  and 
something  hot  in  the  way  of  a  meal.  The  antithesis 
which  is  intended,  however,  is  undoubtedly,  that  be- 
tween a  supply  for  all  and  a  supply  for  a  limited  number. 
If  there  is  any  banquet  of  life,  the  question  certainly  is, 
whether  it  is  set  for  an  unlimited  or  for  a  limited  number. 

If  there  is  a  banquet  of  life,  and  if  it  is  set  for  an  un- 
limited number,  there  is  no  social  science  possible  or 
necessary;  there  would  then  be  no  limiting  conditions 
on  life,  and  consequently  no  problem  of  how  to  conquer 
the  difficulties  of  living.  There  would  be  no  compe- 
tition, no  property,  no  monopoly,  no  inequality.  Fresh 
air  and  sunlight  are  provided  gratuitously  and  super- 
abundantly, not  absolutely,  but  more  nearly  than  any 
other  material  goods,  and  therefore  we  see  that  only  in 
very   exceptional  circumstances,   due   to   man's  action. 


218       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

do  these  things  become  property.  If  food  were  pro- 
vided in  the  same  way,  or  if  land,  as  a  means  of  getting 
food,  were  provided  in  the  same  way,  there  would  be 
no  social  question,  no  classes,  no  property,  no  monopoly, 
no  difference  between  industrial  virtues  and  industrial 
vices,  and  no  inequality.  When,  therefore,  it  is  argued 
that  there  is,  or  was,  or  ought  to  be,  a  banquet  of  life, 
open  to  all,  and  that  the  fact  that  there  is  no  such  thing 
now  proves  that  some  few  must  have  monopolized  it, 
it  is  plain  that  the  whole  notion  is  at  war  with  facts,  and 
that  its  parts  are  at  war  with  each  other. 

The  notion  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  boon  of 
nature,  or  a  banquet  of  life,  shows  that  social  science  is 
still  in  the  stage  that  chemistry  was  in  when  people 
believed  in  a  philosopher's  stone,  or  medicine,  when 
they  believed  in  a  panacea,  or  physiology,  when  they 
believed  in  a  fountain  of  youth,  or  an  elixir  of  life.  Many 
of  the  phenomena  of  the  present  seem  to  indicate  that 
this  group  of  facts  is  just  coming  under  the  dominion  of 
science.  The  discord  and  confusion  which  we  perceive 
are  natural  under  the  circumstances.  Men  never  cling 
to  their  dreams  with  such  tenacity  as  at  the  moment 
when  they  are  losing  faith  in  them,  and  know  it,  but  do 
not  yet  dare  to  confess  it  to  themselves. 

If  there  was  such  a  thing  as  a  banquet  of  life,  open 
to  all  comers,  to  which  each  person  was  entitled  to  have 
access  just  because  he  was  born,  and  if  this  right  could 
be  enforced  against  the  giver  of  the  banquet,  that  is, 
against  nature,  then  we  should  have  exactly  what  we 
want  to  make  this  earth  an  ideal  place  of  residence. 
We  should  have  first  of  all  a  satisfaction  which  cost  no 
effort,  which  is  the  first  desideratum  of  human  happi- 
ness, and  which  we  have  not  hitherto  ever  seen  realized 
at  all  except  in  the  narrow  domain  of  luck.     Secondly, 


THE  BANQUET  OF  LIFE  219 

we  should  have  abstract  justice  in  nature,  which  we  have 
never  had  yet,  for  luck  is  of  all  things  the  most  unjust. 
We  should  also  have  equaKty,  which  hitherto  we  have 
never  found  in  nature.  Finally,  we  should  have  a 
natural  right  which  could  be  defined  and  enforced,  not 
against  men,  but  against  nature  —  the  trouble  with 
natural  rights  hitherto  has  been  that  they  could  not  be 
defined,  that  nature  alone  could  guarantee  them,  and 
that  against  nature  they  could  not  be  enforced. 

If  we  take  the  other  alternative  and  conceive  of  the 
Banquet  of  Life  as  a  limited  feast,  then  we  see  at  once 
that  monopoly  is  in  the  order  of  nature.  The  ques- 
tion of  weal  or  woe  for  mankind  is:  what  are  the  condi- 
tions of  admission?  How  many  are  provided  for?  Can 
we,  by  any  means  open  to  us,  increase  the  supply?  But 
when  we  take  the  question  in  this  form  we  see  that  we  are 
just  where  we  and  our  fathers  always  have  been;  we 
are  forced  to  do  the  best  we  can  under  limited  conditions, 
and  the  Banquet  of  Life  is  nothing  but  a  silly  piece  of 
rhetoric  which  obscures  the  correctness  of  our  concep- 
tion of  our  situation. 

"When  men  reasoned  on  social  phenomena  by  guessing 
how  things  must  have  been  in  primitive  society,  it  was 
easy  for  them  to  conceive  of  a  "state  of  nature"  or  a 
"golden  age";  but,  as  we  come  to  learn  the  facts  about 
the  primitive  condition  of  man  on  earth,  we  find  that 
he  not  only  found  no  banquet  awaiting  him  here,  and  no 
natural  rights  adjusted  to  suit  him,  but  that  he  found 
the  table  of  nature  already  occupied  by  a  very  hungry 
and  persistent  crowd  of  other  animals.  The  whole 
table  was  already  occupied  —  there  was  not  room  for  any 
men  until  they  conquered  it.  It  is  easy  for  any  one 
now  to  assure  himself  that  this  is  the  true  and  only  cor- 
rect notion  to  hold  on  that  matter.     If  land  ever  was  a 


220       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

boon  of  nature  to  anybody  it  was  given  away  to  the 
plants  and  animals  long  before  man  appeared  here. 
When  man  appeared,  he  simply  found  a  great  task  await- 
ing him:  the  plants  and  animals  might  be  made  to  serve 
him,  if  he  could  conquer  them;  the  earth  would  be  his 
if  he  could  drive  off  his  competitors.  He  had  no  char- 
ter against  nature,  and  no  rights  against  her;  every  hope 
in  his  situation  had  an  "if"  in  it  —  if  he  could  win  it. 

We  look  in  vain  for  any  physical  or  metaphysical 
endowment  with  which  men  started  the  life  of  the  race 
on  earth.  We  look  in  vain  for  any  facts  to  sustain  the 
notion  of  a  state  of  primitive  simplicity  and  blessedness, 
or  natural  rights,  or  a  boon  of  material  goods.  All  the 
facts  open  to  us  show  that  man  has  won  on  earth  every- 
thing which  he  has  here  by  toil,  sacrifice,  and  blood; 
all  the  civilization  we  possess  has  been  wrought  out  by 
work  and  pain.  All  the  rights,  freedom,  and  social  power 
which  we  have  inherited  are  products  of  history.  Our 
institutions  are  so  much  a  matter  of  course  to  us  that 
it  is  only  by  academical  training  that  we  learn  what  they 
have  cost  antecedent  generations.  If  serious  knowledge 
on  this  subject  were  more  wide-spread,  probably  we 
should  have  a  higher  appreciation  of  the  value  of  our 
inheritance,  and  we  should  have  less  flippant  discussion 
of  the  question:  what  is  all  this  worth?  We  should 
also  probably  better  understand  the  conditions  of  suc- 
cessful growth  or  reform,  and  have  less  toleration  for 
schemes  of  social  reconstruction. 

Civilization  has  been  of  slow  and  painful  growth.  Its 
history  has  been  marked  by  many  obstructions,  reac- 
tions, and  false  developments.  Whole  centuries  and 
generations  have  lost  their  chances  on  earth,  passing 
through  human  existence,  keeping  up  the  continuity  of 
the  race,  but,  for  their  own  part,  missing  all  share  in  the 


THE  BANQUET  OF  LIFE  221 

civilization  which  had  previously  been  attained,  and 
which  ought  to  have  descended  to  them.  It  is  easy  to 
bring  about  such  epochs  of  social  disease  and  decline  by 
human  passion,  folly,  blunders,  and  crime.  It  is  not 
easy  to  maintain  the  advance  of  civilization;  it  even 
seems  as  if  a  new  danger  to  it  had  arisen  in  our  day. 
Formerly  men  lived  along  instinctively,  under  social 
conditions  and  customs,  and  social  developments  wrought 
themselves  out  by  a  sort  of  natural  process.  Now  we 
deliberate  and  reflect.  Naturally  we  propose  to  inter- 
fere and  manage  according  to  the  product  of  our  reflec- 
tion. It  looks  as  if  there  might  be  danger  soon  lest  we 
should  vote  away  civilization  by  a  plebiscite,  in  an  effort 
to  throw  open  to  everybody  this  imaginary  "Banquet 
of  Life." 


SOME  NATURAL  RIGHTS 

The  mediaeval  notion  about  rights  was  that  they  were 
franchises  or  grants  from  the  head  of  the  state;  each 
man  started  with  just  such  ones,  and  so  many  of  them 
as  his  ancestors  had  succeeded  in  getting  out  of  the 
struggle  of  war  and  court  intrigue.  If  his  ancestors 
had  not  been  successful  in  that  struggle,  he  had  none. 
The  theoretical  basis  of  the  civil  system  was,  therefore, 
the  assumption  that,  in  advance  of  action  by  the  civil 
authority,  man  as  such  had  no  rights.  All  must  be 
assumed  to  be  under  the  same  constraints  and  restric- 
tions, until,  by  franchises,  privileges,  and  exemptions, 
each  of  which  was  capable  of  proof  by  legal  evidence, 
documents,  or  tradition,  some  had  emancipated  them- 
selves from  the  restrictions.  As  these  franchises  and 
privileges  admitted  of  every  variety,  when  compared  with 
each  other  or  combined  with  each  other,  there  could  be 
no  equality.  In  the  system,  the  fact  that  one  man  had 
obtained  a  certain  charter  was  no  reason  why  anybody 
else  should  have  the  same. 

It  will  be  found  again  and  again  in  examining  the  polit- 
ical and  social  dogmas  which  were  enunciated  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  which  have  become  common- 
places and  catchwords  in  the  nineteenth,  that  they  had 
their  origin  in  a  just  and  true  revolt  against  the  doc- 
trines of  mediaeval  society,  so  that  they  are  intelligible 
and  valuable,  when  viewed  in  their  historical  connec- 
tion, however  doubtful  they  may  be  when  taken  as 
universal  a  priori  dogmas. 


SOME  NATURAL  RIGHTS  223 

In  the  case  just  stated,  we  have  an  instance  of  this. 
The  eighteenth-century  notion  of  "natural  rights,"  or 
of  the  "rights  of  man,"  was  a  revolt  against  the  notion 
that  a  man  had  nothing  and  was  entitled  to  nothing 
until  some  other  men  had  given  him  some  rights  here. 
The  rights  of  man  meant  that  a  man,  as  a  man,  entered 
human  society,  not  under  servitude  and  constraint  to 
other  men,  or  to  social  traditions,  but  under  a  presump- 
tion of  non-servitude  and  non-obligation  to  other  men, 
or  to  social  organization.  Natural  rights,  as  opposed 
to  chartered  rights,  meant  that  the  fundamental  pre- 
sumption must  be  changed,  and  that  every  man  must, 
in  the  view  of  social  order  and  obligation,  be  regarded  as 
free  and  independent,  until  some  necessity  had  been 
established  for  restraining  him,  instead  of  being  held  to 
be  in  complete  subjection  to  social  bonds,  until  he  could 
prove  that  some  established  authority  had  emancipated 
him. 

When  so  regarded,  it  is  evident  that  the  notion  of 
natural  rights  is  one  of  great  value  and  importance.  In 
the  abuse  of  it,  however,  it  has  come  to  pass  that  this 
notion  has  become  a  doctrine  which  affords  the  most 
ample  space  for  arbitrary  dogmatism,  and  empty  decla- 
mation. It  has  become  one  of  the  favorite  methods  of 
modem  schemers,  when  they  find  it  difficult  to  provide 
means  by  which  men  may  get  what  they  need  in  order 
to  enjoy  earthly  comfort,  to  put  all  those  necessary 
things  among  "natural  rights."  It  then  stands  estab- 
lished, by  easy  deduction,  that  every  man  has  a  natural 
right  to  succeed  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  or  to  be 
happy.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  state  to  secure  natural 
rights.  Therefore,  if  there  is  anything  which  a  man 
Wants,  he  is  entitled  to  have  it  so  long  as  there  is  any 
of  it. 


224       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

The  notion  that  all  men  are  equal  is  likewise  reasonable 
and  useful  when  taken  in  its  historical  setting.  It  meant, 
in  contradiction  to  the  mediaeval  notion,  that  whatever 
rights  the  state  might  give  to  some,  it  should  give  to  all, 
and  that  whatever  burdens  it  laid  on  some,  it  should 
lay  on  all,  without  distinction  of  persons  or  classes.  No 
such  thing  has  ever  been  realized  or  ever  can  be,  and  the 
doctrine  would  need  modification  and  limitation  to  make 
it  true,  but,  as  a  revolt  against  medisevalism,  it  is  intel- 
ligible. In  its  best  form  it  is  our  modern  "equahty 
before  the  law";  but  we  are  constantly  striving  to  use 
the  state  to  give  privileges,  and  then  to  make  the  priv- 
ileges equal,  or  to  give  them  to  everybody.  Turn  all 
such  propositions  as  we  will,  they  are  only  attempts  to 
lift  ourselves  by  our  boot-straps,  or  to  bring  good  things 
into  existence  by  decree. 

Ever  since  it  has  been  accepted  doctrine  that  there 
are  natural  rights,  innumerable  attempts  have  been 
made  to  formulate  "declarations"  of  them,  that  is,  to 
tell  what  they  are.  No  such  attempt  has  ever  suc- 
ceeded, and  the  history  of  the  effort  to  define  and  spec- 
ify what  the  rights  of  man  are  is  instructive  for  the 
sense  and  value  of  the  notion  itself.  At  present 
this  effort  is  prosecuted,  not  by  parliaments  and  con- 
ventions, but  by  social  philosophers.  As  these  attempts 
go  on,  they  develop  more  and  more  completely  the 
futility  of  the  notion,  or  its  purely  mischievous  char- 
acter as  a  delusion  which  draws  us  away  from  what 
might  profit  us. 

Among  the  latest  enunciations  of  the  fundamental 
and  universal  rights  of  man,  is  that  of  "the  right  to 
the  full  product  of  labor."  This  has  been  declared,  in  the 
most  intelligent  exposition  of  it  known  to  me,^  to  be  the 

^  A.  Menger,  "Das  Recht  auf  den  vollen  Arbeitsertrag."     Stuttgart,  1886. 


SOME  NATURA.L  RIGHTS  225 

same  as  "the  right  to  an  existence."  The  two  "rights" 
are  in  plain  contradiction. 

In  the  first  place,  the  "right  to  the  complete  product 
of  labor"  contains  one  of  the  usual  ambiguities.  Is  it 
meant  that  the  man  who  does  any  manual  labor  in  con- 
nection with,  or  contribution  to  the  production  of  a 
thing,  should  have  the  whole  of  that  thing.''  Or,  is  it  meant 
that  the  man  who  contributes  manual  labor  to  the  pro- 
ductive enterprise  should  have  all  that  part  of  the  thing 
which  belongs  to  the  labor  element,  in  proportion  to  the 
capital,  land,  and  other  elements  which  contribute  to 
production?  If  the  former,  then  we  are  face  to  face  with 
a  proposition  for  robbery,  with  all  the  social  consequences 
which  must  be  anticipated.  Furthermore,  although  it 
may  seem  a  very  simple  thing  to  provide  that  those 
who  do  the  manual  work  shall  have  all  the  product,  it 
is  plain,  so  soon  as  we  reflect  upon  the  complicated  com- 
binations of  labor  which  are  involved  in  any  case  of  pro- 
duction, and  also  upon  the  complicated  character  of 
modem  "products"  and  the  way  in  which  they  con- 
tribute to,  and  depend  upon  each  other,  that  it  would 
be  impracticable  to  divide  the  products  among  those 
who  have  done  the  labor  part  of  production. 

If  it  is  meant  that  the  labor  element  shall  have  all  the 
part  of  the  product  which  is  due  to  the  labor  element  in 
it,  the  question  arises,  how  is  that  element  to  be  meas- 
ured? How  is  its  proportion  to  the  whole  to  be  deter- 
mined? At  present  it  is  done  by  supply  and  demand, 
and  until  we  have  some  standard  of  measurement  pro- 
vided, we  cannot  tell  whether  the  present  arrangement 
does  not  do  just  what  is  desired.  There  are  constantly 
reiterated  assertions  that  it  does  not.  It  is  well  worth 
noticing  that  no  ground  for  these  assertions  is  offered, 
and  that  there  is  no  possibiHty  of  verifying  them  unless 


226       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

some  standard  of  measurement  can  be  proposed  by  which 
we  can  find  out  what  the  share  ought  to  be,  and  compare 
it  with  what  is. 

In  any  case  the  right  to  the  full  product  of  labor  would 
be  contradictory  to  the  right  to  an  existence,  for,  if  the 
full  product  of  the  labor  of  some  falls  short  of  what  is 
necessary  to  maintain  their  existence,  then  they  must 
encroach  upon  the  full  labor  product  of  the  others,  that 
is,  impair  the  right  of  the  latter.  The  "right  to  an 
existence,"  however,  has  the  advantage  of  putting  the 
notion  in  a  distinct  and  complete  form;  it  covers  the 
whole  ground  at  once;  it  no  longer  spends  energy  in 
struggling  for  such  means  as  the  right  to  property,  or 
labor,  or  liberty,  or  life.  If  dogmatic  affirmation  can  do 
anything,  why  waste  it  on  the  means?  Why  not  expend 
it  at  once  upon  the  desired  end?  The  real  misery  of 
mankind  is  the  struggle  for  existence;  why  not  "declare" 
that  there  ought  not  to  be  any  struggle  for  existence, 
and  that  there  shall  not  be  any  more?  Let  it  be  decreed 
that  existence  is  a  natural  right,  and  let  it  be  secured 
in  that  way. 

If  we  attempt  to  execute  this  plan,  it  is  plain  that  we 
shall  not  abolish  the  struggle  for  existence;  we  shall 
only  bring  it  about  that  some  men  must  fight  that  struggle 
for  others. 

Although  the  right  of  existence  has  the  advantage  of 
being  broad  and  radical,  it  has  the  disadvantage  of 
being  abstract  and  impracticable.  Another  writer  ^ 
has  recently  given  another  formula,  which,  although  less 
ambitious,  is  equally  effective  and  far  more  practical; 
he  affirms  the  natural  right  to  capital.  This  must  be 
regarded  as  the  rational  outcome,  so  far,  of  the  attempt 
to  formulate  natural  rights.     All  the  good  things  which  we 

^  "Le  Droit  au  Capital,  par  Le  Solitaire."     Paris,  1886. 


SOME  NATURAL  RIGHTS  227 

want,  and  find  so  hard  to  get,  depend  on  capital.  Log- 
ically, it  is  less  satisfactory  to  demand  a  means  than  to 
demand  an  end;  but  when  the  means  is  the  one  com- 
plete and  only  necessary  one,  that  point  is  of  little  im- 
portance. If  we  could  all  have  capital,  we  should  have 
the  great  and  only  weapon  for  the  struggle  for  existence. 
It  is  only  a  pity,  however,  that,  in  this  case,  as  in  all 
the  others,  so  soon  as  we  get  a  good  formula,  it  turns  out 
to  be  either  a  contradiction,  a  bathos,  an  impracti- 
cability, or  an  absurdity.  So  long  as  capital  has  to  be 
brought  into  existence  by  human  labor  and  self-denial, 
if  we  set  up  a  right  to  capital  in  all  men,  we  shall  have 
to  affirm  that  those  who  have  not  produced  the  capital 
have  a  right  to  have  it,  but  that  those  who  have  pro- 
duced it  have  not  a  right  to  have  it,  since  from  these 
latter  we  take  it  away. 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  POVERTY 

If  it  were  not  for  death,  disease,  and  poverty,  this 
world  would  be  a  perfectly  satisfactory  place  of  abode 
for  man.  Hitherto  we  have  endeavored  to  make  the 
best  of  it  by  studying  physiology,  therapeutics,  and 
hygiene,  so  as  to  prolong  life  and  ward  ofif  disease,  as 
much  as  possible,  and  by  trying  to  devise  means  for  pro- 
viding ourselves  with  the  necessaries  of  life,  in  the  great- 
est possible  measure,  by  the  use  of  our  hands  and  our 
brains.  Death  and  disease  are  not  yet  brought  into  dis- 
cussion, under  the  general  philosophy  of  the  day,  that 
everything  on  earth  ought  to  be  so  as  "to  satisfy  man's 
needs,"  but  attention  is  demanded  for  grave  discussion 
of  means  for  abolishing  poverty.  Inasmuch  as  all  that 
we  have  accomplished,  in  the  way  of  conquering  the 
minor  ills  of  life,  consists  in  the  acquisition  and  appli- 
cation of  wealth,  the  abolition  of  poverty  would  mean 
the  distribution  of  wealth,  and  the  summary  and  suc- 
cessful accomplishment  of  the  struggle  for  existence, 
together  with  the  annihilation  of  all  the  material  cares 
and  petty  annoyances  of  human  life. 

Every  invention  or  discovery  ever  made  by  man, 
which  has  been  useful  and  welcome,  has  been  so  because 
it  helped  to  abolish  poverty.  We  hear  a  great  deal 
about  "the  social  problem,"  and  "the  labor  question," 
and,  at  the  end  of  all  the  labored  discussion,  we  find  that 
they  are  just  what  they  have  always  been  since  the  begin- 
ning of  civilization,  only  the  question  is:  how  can  we 
apply  our  energies  to  the  task  of  living  on  earth  so  as  to 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  POVERTY  229 

get  the  maximum  result  for  a  given  expenditure  of  energy? 
If  now  a  device  can  be  invented  which  will  abolish  pov- 
erty, it  will  accomplish  the  work  of  all  inventions  and 
discoveries  at  one  stroke.  All  the  devices  of  statesman- 
ship which  have  ever  been  made,  have  at  least  pretended 
to  work  toward  the  enhancement  of  the  welfare  of  human 
beings  on  earth.  If  now  we  can  hit  upon  a  device  which 
will  organize  human  society  once  for  all  so  that  poverty 
will  be  abolished,  we  shall  have  done  the  whole  work  at 
once. 

At  present,  poverty  is  correlated  with  ignorance,  vice, 
and  misfortune  —  the  slow  and  tedious  processes  which 
we  have  hitherto  been  invited  to  employ  and  trust,  have 
aimed  to  abolish  poverty  by  working  against  ignorance, 
vice,  and  misfortune.  If  we  can  abolish  poverty  by  a 
device  or  contrivance  introduced  into  the  social  organ- 
ization, then  we  can  divorce  poverty  from  its  correla- 
tion with  ignorance,  vice,  and  misfortune.  We  can  let 
those  things  stand,  and  yet  escape  their  consequences. 

It  is  plain,  however,  upon  a  moment's  reflection,  that 
poverty  and  wealth  are  only  relative  terms,  like  heat 
and  cold.  If  there  were  no  difference  in  the  command 
we  have  over  the  material  comforts  of  life,  there  would 
be  no  poverty  and  wealth.  As  we  go  down  in  the  scale 
of  civilization  we  find  the  contrast  less  and  less;  so,  on 
the  contrary,  as  we  go  up  in  civilization,  we  find  the  con- 
trast greater.  There  is  every  reason  to  suppose  that 
this  distinction  will  become  more  and  more  marked  at 
every  stage  of  advance.  At  every  step  of  civilization, 
the  rewards  of  right  living,  and  the  penalties  of  wrong 
living,  both  become  far  heavier;  every  chance  for  accom- 
plishing something  better  brings  with  it  a  chance  of  equiv- 
alent loss  by  neglect  or  incapacity.  An  American  Indian 
who  had  a  bow  and  arrow  was  far  superior  in  wealth  to 


230       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

one  who  was  destitute  of  those  things,  but  one  who  has 
a  breech-loading  rifle  is  separated  from  one  who  has  not 
by  a  far  wider  interval.  The  men  among  whom  there  is 
the  least  social  problem  are  those  who  are  in  the  lowest 
stages  of  barbarism,  among  whom  no  one  has  such  supe- 
riority over  the  others,  in  his  emancipation  from  misery, 
as  to  make  them,  by  contrast,  feel  the  stress  of  their 
situation. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  well-to-do  classes  in  the  midst 
of  the  most  civilized  communities  show  how  much  has 
been  done  to  enable  any  men  to  emancipate  themselves 
and  their  children  from  the  grossest  ills  and  hardships 
of  earthly  life.  But  the  strain  is  still  in  the  same  direc- 
tion, and  on  the  same  lines,  and  by  the  same  means; 
whatever  can  be  proposed  to  help  on  the  great  struggle 
is  to  the  purpose,  and  is  what  we  want  to  learn  from 
anybody  who  can  teach  us.  The  proposition  to  abolish 
poverty  is  a  proposition  to  do  the  work  all  at  once  —  to 
jump  to  its  conclusion.  In  view  of  the  slow  and  pain- 
ful efforts  of  the  past,  this  is  certainly  an  ambitious 
proposal. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  easy 
to  provide  a  precept  for  the  abolition  of  poverty.  Let 
every  man  be  sober,  industrious,  prudent,  and  wise, 
and  bring  up  his  children  to  be  so  likewise,  and  poverty 
will  be  abolished  in  a  few  generations.  If  it  is  answered 
that  men,  with  the  best  intentions,  cannot  fulfil  this  pre- 
cept, because  they  make  innocent  mistakes,  and  fall 
into  errors  in  judgment,  then  the  demand  is  changed, 
and  we  are  not  asked  for  a  means  of  abolishing  poverty, 
but  for  a  means  of  abolishing  human  error.  If  it  be 
objected,  again,  that  sober,  industrious,  and  prudent 
men  meet  with  misfortune,  then  the  demand  is  for  a 
means  of  abolishing  misfortune. 


THE  ABOLITION  OF  POVERTY  231 

Young  men  among  us  always  talk  of  the  time  when 
they  will  be  rich,  as  if  wealth  were  at  least  among  the 
possibilities  for  each  one.  At  middle  life  all  but  a  few 
of  us  find  that  we  shall  never  be  rich  —  poverty  is  our 
lot.  We  are  in  the  great  crowd  to  whom,  their  whole  life 
long,  the  struggle  for  material  necessities  must  be  the 
predominant  or  absorbing  interest.  If  we  can  support 
our  families  and  pay  our  debts,  that  becomes  the  horizon 
of  our  ambition.  We  either  did  not  plan  our  lives  cor- 
rectly, or  we  have  made  errors  of  judgment,  or  we  have 
misapprehended  the  facts  of  life,  or  we  have  neglected 
our  opportunities,  or  we  have  met  with  misfortune.  If 
now  we  could  unite  our  failures  and  transmute  them  into 
success  at  the  bidding  of  some  social  magician,  and 
"abolish"  the  poverty  with  which  we  have  been  con- 
tending all  our  lives,  what  a  grand  thing  it  would  be! 
It  would  then  only  remain,  to  abolish  disease  and  death, 
and  all  human  woes  would  come  to  an  end  at  once. 

But  when  we  turn  to  examine  the  means  which  we 
are  invited  to  employ  for  this  purpose,  we  find  that  it  is 
only  the  same  old  proposal  once  more  in  a  new  disguise; 
we  are  invited  only  to  take  and  waste  what  wealth  there 
is;  we  are  to  abolish  poverty  by  abolishing  wealth. 
We  are  to  go  back,  in  fact,  to  the  primitive  barbarism, 
to  the  bliss  which  rests  on  ignorance,  and  the  content- 
ment which  comes  from  savage  stupidity;  and  the  net 
final  gain  will  be  that  our  envy  will  no  longer  be  excited 
by  seeing  anybody  else  better  off  than  we. 

The  philosophizing  which  goes  on  about  these  things 
is  one  of  the  marks  of  the  literature  of  our  time.  Most 
of  it  is  as  idle  as  it  would  be  to  write  essays  about  the 
distress  of  excessive  heat.  When  all  is  said,  the  only 
rational  question  is:  what  can  we  do  about  it.f*  When 
we  read  the  older  literature,  and  note  the  efforts  which 


232       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

men  of  former  generations  made  to  read  the  signs  of  their 
times,  and  to  interpret  what  they  saw  going  on  about 
them,  we  find  that  they  never  succeeded,  and  we  may 
be  very  sure  that  we  blunder  in  like  manner  when  we 
try  to  do  the  same  thing.  The  world  will  not  turn  back- 
ward, because  some  think  that  its  going  forward  does 
not  inure  to  the  equal  advantage  of  all ;  nor  even  because 
its  going  forward  is  attended  by  revolutions  in  industry 
which  are  harmful  to  very  many  of  us.  The  only  sen- 
sible thing  to  do,  when  such  changes  come  about,  which 
bring  some  ills  upon  us,  is  to  seek  out  all  the  advanta- 
geous chances  which  the  same  changes  offer  us,  and  to 
make  the  most  of  those. 


THE  BOON  OF  NATURE 

In  former  times,  when  the  efforts  of  man  to  lift  him- 
self by  his  boot-straps  were  expended,  not  upon  social 
enterprises,  but  upon  enterprises  in  physics  and  the 
art  of  medicine,  the  reigniag  idols  of  desire  were  the 
philosopher's  stone,  the  panacea,  the  fountain  of  youth, 
etc.  The  distinctive  mark  of  this  boastful  century  of 
oiu*s  is  likely  to  be  in  history  that  it  was  the  one  in  which 
the  old  delusions  and  self-deceptions  of  humanity,  driven 
at  last  from  the  domain  of  physics  by  the  advance  of 
science,  retreated  to  the  domain  of  social  phenomena  and 
there  entrenched  themselves  for  another  attempt  to  re- 
attain  dominion.  Accordingly  we  hear  now  about  the 
"Banquet  of  Life,"  the  "Boon  of  Nature,"  the  "Patri- 
mony of  the  Disinherited,"  and  other  fine  phrases  of  the 
same  class,  all  of  which  take  for  granted  the  question  of 
most  serious  import  in  the  whole  range  of  interest  to  which 
they  apply,  viz.,  whether  there  really  are  any  such  things. 

The  question  whether  man  comes  into  this  world  pro- 
vided by  nature  with  an  outfit  of  some  kind;  whether 
he  finds  any  endowment  awaiting  him;  whether  he  is 
started  on  the  struggle  for  existence  with  some  chances 
predetermined  in  his  favor  by  nature;  whether  he  enters 
into  a  natural  estate;  whether  nature  fits  him  out  with 
any  natural  rights;  whether  he  comes  iuto  the  world  as 
a  man  goes  to  a  banquet,  which  somebody  has  prepared 
for  him,  and  to  which  he  goes  not  by  invitation,  but  of 
right;  whether  nature's  attitude  to  him  is  at  all  that 
of  boon-giver;  whether  he  is  bom  to  happiness  and  has 


234       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

a  right  to  complain,  if  he  does  not  have  a  good  time, 
without  regard  to  his  behavior  —  or  whether  man  has 
never  found  in  nature  anything  but  a  hard-fisted  step- 
mother, who  would  yield  only  what  was  extorted  from 
her;  whether  he  has  not  had  to  conquer  every  good 
thing  which  he  possesses;  whether  all  rights  and  liberty 
are  not  a  product  of  civilization  —  these  are  questions 
which  must  be  answered  by  an  appeal  to  history.  With 
the  means  now  at  our  disposal  there  can  be  no  doubt 
as  to  the  answer.  We  can  find  no  sentiment  whatever 
in  nature;  that  all  comes  from  man.  We  can  find  no 
disposition  at  all  in  nature  to  conform  her  operations 
to  man's  standards,  so  as  to  do  what  is  pleasant  or  advan- 
tageous to  man  rather  than  anything  else.  Before  the 
tribunal  of  nature  a  man  has  no  more  right  to  life  than 
a  rattlesnake;  he  has  no  more  right  to  liberty  than  any 
wild  beast;  his  right  to  the  pursuit  of  happiness  is  noth- 
ing but  a  license  to  maintain  the  struggle  for  existence, 
if  he  can  find  within  himself  the  powers  with  which  to 
do  it.  In  civilized  society  the  right  to  live  turns  into  the 
guarantee  that  he  shall  not  be  murdered  by  his  fellow-men, 
a  right  which  is  a  creation  of  law,  order,  and  civiliza- 
tion, and  is  guaranteed  by  nothing  less  than  the  stabil- 
ity of  the  social  order  as  it  has  been  inherited  and  now 
is.  Liberty  is  an  enlargement  of  earthly  chances  for  the 
individual  against  nature,  which  has  been  won  by  gen- 
erations of  toil  and  suffering,  and  which  depends  upon 
civilization,  as  it  is  the  product  of  it;  the  right  to  the 
pursuit  of  happiness  is  nothing  but  the  right  to  live  one's 
life  out  in  one's  own  way.  Instead  of  lying  back  at  the 
origin  of  society  it  lies  yet  a  great  way  in  the  future, 
when  the  present  disposition  of  every  one  to  tell  his 
neighbors  how  they  ought  to  live  shall  have  been  over- 
come. Probably  the  primitive  savage  was  happy  according 


THE  BOON  OF  NATURE  236 

to  his  standards;  but  if  even  it  were  true  that  prim- 
itive men  had  and  enjoyed  some  boon  of  nature,  how  can 
it  be  imagined  that  a  civilized  society  could  get  happi- 
ness for  its  meml^ers  according  to  the  standards  of  civ- 
ilized society,  while  re-establishing  any  of  the  facts  and 
conditions  of  primitive  savage  life?  If  we  had  to  go 
back  to  the  origin  of  civilization  to  get  the  boon,  how 
much  would  the  boon  be  worth? 

In  truth  there  is  no  boon,  and  never  was.  Nothing 
could  well  be  more  contradictory  to  the  facts  as  they 
appear  than  the  notion  of  such  a  thing. 

It  is  said,  of  course,  that  the  earth  is  the  boon,  that 
is  to  say,  the  "land."  The  notion  which  has  been 
caught  up  is  that  the  land  is  a  gift  of  nature  to  all  and 
that  some  have  monopolized  it.  How  many  were  the 
*'air'  to  whom  it  was  given?  How  many  are  the  "some" 
who  have  monopolized  it?  Plainly  what  is  meant  and 
ought  to  be  said  is,  that  the  land  was  given  to  many  and 
has  been  monopolized  by  a  few.  This  is  the  very  oppo- 
site of  the  truth  —  the  earth  was  given  to  a  few,  and 
civilization  has  made  it  available  to  a  large  number. 
Monopoly  is  in  nature,  and  liberty,  or  relaxation  of 
monopoly,  is  one  of  the  triumphs  of  civilization.  The 
"land"  in  this  connection  is  a  very  delusive  expression. 
Every  man  who  stands  on  the  earth's  surface  excludes 
every  one  else  from  so  much  of  it  as  he  covers;  every 
one  who  eats  a  loaf  of  bread  appropriates  to  himself  for 
the  time-being  the  exclusive  use  and  enjoyment  of  so 
many  square  feet  of  the  earth's  surface  as  were  required 
to  raise  the  wheat;  every  one  who  bums  wood  to  warm 
himself,  or  uses  the  fiber  of  cotton  or  wool  to  clothe 
himself,  appropriates  in  monopoly  a  part  of  the  land  so 
far  as  the  land  is  of  utility  or  interest  to  man.  Perhaps 
the  most  fundamental  fact  which  makes  this  world  a 


236       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

world  of  toil  and  self-denial  is  that  two  men  cannot  eat 
the  same  loaf  of  bread.  This  pitiless  and  hopeless  monop- 
oly is,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  reason  for  capital  and 
rent,  for  property  and  rights,  for  law  and  the  state,  for 
poverty  and  inequality. 

There  are  many  reasons  why  it  would  appear  more 
correct  to  say  that  nature  gave  man  to  the  earth  than 
that  she  gave  the  earth  to  man.  If  we  try  to  form  a 
notion  of  the  condition  of  the  man  who  first  received 
the  boon  in  its  fresh  originality,  before  anybody  had 
stolen  or  appropriated  it,  we  find  that  it  was  given  to  him 
in  just  the  same  sense  in  which  it  was  given  to  the  other 
animals,  only  that  they  had  priority  and  were  already  in 
full  possession.  Man  was  far  superior  to  them  in  organ- 
ization, and  he  displaced  them;  but  the  nearer  we  get 
back  to  the  pure  boon,  the  more  we  find  man  like  the 
other  animals  in  his  mode  of  existence,  his  grade  of  com- 
fort, his  standard  of  happiness,  his  relation  to  the  "land,'* 
and  his  subjection  to  nature.  If  now,  we  build  houses 
several  stories  high,  so  that  several  men  can,  in  effect, 
stand  on  the  same  square  feet  of  the  earth's  surface,  or 
if  we  make  the  same  number  of  square  feet  bear  two 
loaves  of  bread  instead  of  one,  we  break  the  monopoly 
of  nature,  but  we  do  it  by  capital  and  the  arts  of 
civilization.  Whatever  we  have,  therefore,  which  is 
worth  having  is  not  a  boon  of  nature,  but  a  conquest  of 
civilization  from  nature. 

If  we  look  at  any  part  of  the  earth's  surface  in  a  state 
of  nature  as  it  is  when  given  to  man,  instead  of  finding 
that  it  fills  any  notion  of  gift  or  boon,  we  find  that  it 
offers  a  task  of  appalling  magnitude.  It  is  covered  with 
trees,  or  stones,  or  swamps;  or  hostile  animals  of  vari- 
ous kinds  occupy  it;  or  malaria  stands  guard  over  it. 
Between  the  boon  and  any  use  by  man  stands  a  series 


THE  BOON  OF  NATURE  237 

of  obstacles  to  be  overcome;  dangerous  and  toilsome 
work  to  be  done.  It  is  a  chance  for  the  man  to  maintain 
the  struggle  for  existence  if  he  is  strong  enough  to  conquer 
obstacles;  if  not,  then  he  may  lie  down  and  die  of  despair 
on  the  face  of  the  boon  and  not  a  breeze,  or  a  leaflet, 
or  a  sunbeam  will  vary  its  due  course  to  help  or  pity 
him.  This  is  the  only  attitude  in  which  we  find  nature 
when  we  come  face  to  face  with  her  in  her  original  atti- 
tude toward  mankind;  it  is  only  when  we  come  to  meet 
her,  armed  with  knowledge,  science,  and  capital,  that 
we  force  back  her  Hmitations  and  win  some  wider  and 
easier  chances  of  existence  for  ourselves. 

Robinson  Crusoe  enjoyed  the  boon  of  nature.  He 
chmbed  to  the  top  of  his  island  and  looked  about,  "mon- 
arch of  all  he  surveyed,"  not  a  human  soul  to  divide  or 
dispute  it  with  him;  but  he  sank  down  in  despair,  think- 
ing himself  the  most  miserable  of  living  creatures,  just 
because  he  had  the  boon  all  to  himself  and  because  the 
maintenance  of  his  existence  was  such  a  crushing  task. 
How  many  men  in  the  United  States  to-day  could  main- 
tain their  existence  each  on  a  square  mile  of  land,  in  its 
natural  condition,  in  the  temperate  zone,  if  they  were 
cut  off  from  society  and  civilization? 

Only  the  hardiest  and  strongest  men  are  now  capable 
of  breaking  up  land  in  a  state  of  nature,  and  beginning 
the  reduction  of  it  to  human  use,  even  when  they  have 
the  resources  of  the  arts  and  capital,  and  are  supported 
and  reinforced  all  the  time  by  a  strong  civilized  society 
behind  them.  There  are  millions  of  acres  of  the  "boon" 
now  open  to  any  one  who  will  go  to  them,  and  none  go 
but  those  who  are  at  the  same  time  physically  the  strong- 
est and  socially  the  worst  off  of  living  men.  The  exist- 
ing landowners  of  the  United  States  are  represented  to 
be  holding,  unjustly,  exclusive  possession  of  what  nature 


238       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

has  given  to  us  all.  But,  although  in  the  sixteenth 
century  the  whole  territory  now  in  this  Union  stood  free 
and  open,  entirely  unappropriated  by  white  men,  yet 
every  one  of  the  numerous  attempts  that  were  made  to 
establish  settlements  of  white  men  here  failed.  Instead 
of  finding  nature  holding  out  a  boon  which  they  had 
only  to  take,  they  found  her  waiting  for  them  with  fam- 
ine, cold,  and  disease.  The  settlement  at  Jamestown 
barely  maintained  itself  against  the  hardships  and  toil 
of  its  situation;  the  Plymouth  settlement  would  not 
have  survived  its  first  winter  if  the  Indians,  instead  of 
being  hostile,  had  not  given  aid.  No  settlement  was 
established  until  it  was  supported  by  capital  and  main- 
tained through  a  period  of  struggles  and  first  conquest 
over  nature,  by  reinforcements  from  a  secured  and 
established  civilization  in  the  Old  World. 

There  is  no  boon    in   nature.     All  the  blessings  we 
enjoy  are  the  fruits  of  labor,  toil,  self-denial,  and  study. 


LAND  MONOPOLY 

If  a  man  were  finding  his  way  along  a  road,  or  through 
a  wood,  with  no  other  mortal  within  a  mile,  the  way  in 
which  he  swung  his  arms,  or  otherwise  behaved  himself, 
would  be  of  no  consequence  to  any  one  but  himself.  If 
he  met,  now  and  then,  another,  his  movements  would 
have  to  be  put  under  some  slight  and  occasional  restraint. 
If  he  were  walking  down  a  city  street,  his  entire  behavior 
would  necessarily  be  subjected  to  discipline.  If  he  were 
trying  to  force  his  way  through  a  dense  crowd,  he  would 
have  to  be  content  with  very  slow  speed,  and  would 
have  to  use  the  utmost  care  and  attention  in  the  mode 
of  his  contact  with  the  individuals  around  him.  The 
limitations  on  his  freedom  of  movement,  on  his  chances 
of  getting  ahead  with  speed  on  his  own  business  and  on 
his  personal  comfort,  would  not  advance  in  proportion 
to  the  increasing  numbers  about  him,  but  would  advance 
in  a  progressive  and  very  rapidly  increasing  ratio. 

If  a  man  lived  on  a  farm  with  no  neighbor  within  a 
mile,  the  sanitary  arrangements  in  and  around  his  dwell- 
ing would  have  little  importance  except  for  his  own 
family,  and  sanitary  arrangements  would  be  of  very  little 
importance  at  best  under  such  circumstances.  If  he 
lived  on  a  village  street,  sanitary  arrangements  would 
attain  a  certain  importance.  If  he  lived  in  a  city  they 
would  become  a  leading  interest.  If  he  lived  in  a  tene- 
ment in  a  densely  populated  part  of  a  great  city,  sanitary 
arrangements  would  stand  among  the  very  first  of  the 
interests  of  himself  and  his  neighbors.  The  interest  and 
importance    of    sanitary    arrangements    would    advance 


240       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

under  the  same  law  as  the  limitations  on  personal  chance 
and  convenience  in  the  previous  case. 

If  there  were  a  space  which  possessed  advantages  for 
any  interest  of  mankind,  —  being  in  the  sunlight  or  out 
of  it,  in  the  wind  or  out  of  it,  near  to  a  spring  or  remote 
from  a  swamp,  salubrious,  possessing  a  fine  view,  or 
otherwise  desirable,  —  if  this  space  were  large  and  ample 
in  proportion  to  the  number  of  men  who  desired  to  avail 
themselves  of  it,  no  competition  or  struggle  would  take 
place  between  them  for  it;  but  if  their  number 
increased,  contact  and  collision  would  begin.  If  there 
should  come  to  be  more  persons  eager  for  the  advantage 
of  situation  than  could  find  place  under  the  physical 
limitations  existing,  this  struggle  would  go  on  to  any 
degree  of  intensity.  It  would  advance  under  the  same 
law  of  progression  previously  stated. 

If  a  number  of  persons  are  out  in  the  fields,  fresh  air 
is  present  in  immense  superfluity.  The  personal  habits 
of  these  persons,  e.g.,  cleanliness,  would  be  of  little  im- 
portance; even  if  some  of  them  had  a  contagious  disease, 
the  danger  of  infection  would  be  slight.  But  if  they 
came  nearer  together,  and  then  nearer,  and  were  finally 
crowded  tightly  into  some  limited  and  enclosed  space, 
they  would  consume  the  air  away  from  each  other,  they 
would  poison  each  other;  and  if  there  were  a  disease  among 
them  its  chances  of  being  transmitted  would  rise  toward 
certainty. 

In  the  mere  matters  of  space  and  fresh  air  and  sun- 
light, therefore,  men  are  under  conditions  of  monotony 
and  exclusion;  their  spheres  of  interest  and  of  life- 
supply  collide,  and  they  become  noxious  to  each  other, 
whether  they  will  or  not,  under  a  rapidly  increasing  pro- 
gression, when  their  numbers  increase  with  respect  to 
the  natural  conditions. 


LAND  MONOPOLY  241 

If  a  number  of  men  live  on  the  banks  of  a  stream 
whicli  ofiFers  a  supply  of  water  far  in  excess  of  all  their 
requirements,  no  question  of  water-supply  rises  among 
them.  If,  however,  they  need  water  to  irrigate  their 
land,  or  if  they  keep  flocks  and  herds  which  must  get 
water  from  few,  scattered,  and  scanty  springs,  water 
may  come  to  be  an  object  of  earnest  contention  and 
struggle;  if  they  want  water  for  power,  they  find  that  the 
power  of  a  certain  fall  is  a  limited  quantity.  If  they 
contend  for  it  they  may  divide  it  up.  If  the  compet- 
itors become  more  numerous,  an  advancing  Kmitation 
and  deficiency  are  experienced  by  all;  they  run  inev- 
itably into  a  situation  where  so  many  want  all  that  none 
have  any.  If  they  want  air  for  power,  they  find  that 
the  favorable  situations  for  windmills  are  limited,  that 
these  will  all  be  occupied  as  the  number  who  need  them 
increases,  and  then  that  the  occupiers  will  impede  each 
other. 

If  men  who  have  a  large  wood-supply  waste  it  as  fuel, 
no  human  interest  is  affected.  It  is  true  even  then  that 
what  one  takes  out  of  the  supply  of  nature  another 
cannot  have  and  use;  but  when  there  is  more  than 
enough  for  all,  no  protest  is  made.  As  numbers  increase 
and  the  wood  is  cut  off,  every  man  who  appropriates  a 
tree  to  make  a  table  out  of  it,  or  to  burn  it  for  his  own 
fuel-supply,  invades  by  just  so  much  the  sphere  of  inter- 
est of  his  neighbors,  and  as  the  number  increases  all 
must  sink  into  a  condition  of  want  and  misery,  that  is, 
of  imperfectly  satisfied  necessities,  not  in  a  direct  ratio, 
but  under  the  same  advancing  progression. 

If  the  woods  are  full  of  game  and  the  men  are  few, 
there  is  no  problem  of  food  supply  and  no  social  ques- 
tion. Land  means  nothing  but  game.  Any  one  who 
kills  an  animal  invades  and  exhausts  the  common  stock. 


242       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

but  no  one  complains.  As  the  number  of  the  men  in- 
creases, their  consumption  surpasses  the  natural  in- 
crease of  the  animals  and  reacts  upon  the  number  of  the 
men.  An  increase  in  the  number  of  the  men  will  there- 
fore produce  all  the  darkest  phenomena  of  the  compe- 
tition of  life,  reduce  the  whole  to  misery,  and  produce 
a  "social  question."  As  regards  furs  used  by  man,  we 
have  a  case  of  this  law  at  the  present  time  in  the  midst 
of  civilization.  Art  has  been  able  only  in  a  very  limited 
measure  to  act  upon  the  production  of  fur;  we  are  still 
obliged  to  rely  upon  the  natural  increase,  and  the  fur 
industry  consists  in  little  else  than  the  appropriation  of 
what  nature  produces.  It  is,  therefore,  an  industry 
nearly  on  the  plane  of  the  very  first  and  primary  indus- 
tries of  mankind.  If  we  confine  attention  to  the  best 
and  finest  furs  of  wild  animals,  this  would  be  absolutely 
true.  Now,  as  the  earth  is  more  and  more  fully  popu- 
lated, and  the  animals  are  killed  off,  the  supply  dimin- 
ishes, and  as  wealth  increases  the  demand  increases,  so 
that  a  fur  industry  is  inevitably  a  monopoly,  and  one 
with  an  unearned  increment  of  the  best  defined  char- 
acter; yet  if  we  should  all  try  to  make  good  our  claim 
to  the  bounty  of  nature  in  the  seals  of  Alaska  or  the 
sables  of  Siberia,  how  should  we  do  it? 

We  see,  therefore,  that  every  natural  agent  is  a  nat- 
ural monopoly.  Men  want  land  only  for  the  sake  of  the 
standing-room,  air,  water,  sunlight,  animals,  fish,  trees, 
minerals,  stone,  lumber,  firewood,  etc.,  which  they  get 
out  of  it.  In  regard  to  every  one  of  these  things  they 
are  living  and  working  under  the  conditions  of  monop- 
oly. When  the  supply  under  any  monopoly  is  indefi- 
nitely large  with  respect  to  the  demand,  the  monopoly 
has  no  stringency  or  pressure  and  is  of  no  importance; 
but  as  the  demand  rises  the  pressure  of  the  monopoly 


LAND  MONOPOLY  243 

advances  in  a  progression  to  which  no  limits  can  be 
assigned.  The  exclusion  which  the  men  exercise  toward 
each  other  is  not  in  law  or  in  property;  it  is  in  use.  A 
man  appropriates  a  plant,  tree,  animal,  mineral,  or 
other  thing  out  of  the  raw  product  of  nature,  because  he 
wants  to  consume  it  in  satisfaction  of  his  wants.  When 
he  does  so  consume  it,  he  excludes  everybody  else  from 
the  same  satisfaction  by  the  use  of  the  same  natural 
product.  He  cannot  do  anything  else  if  he  proposes  to 
live;  his  only  alternative  is  to  commit  suicide  and  get 
out  of  the  world  so  as  to  leave  more  room  for  others. 

Hence,  it  is  clear  how  crude  and  futile  is  the  notion 
that  monopoly,  or  monopoly  of  land,  is  modem  and  a 
product  of  civilization;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  whole 
current  set  of  notions  about  appropriation,  "bounty  of 
nature,"  "unearned  increment,"  and  all  the  rest;  and, 
more  especially  still,  the  notion  that  in  some  primitive 
time  and  under  some  original  organization  of  society, 
none  of  these  things  were  as  they  are  now.  Li  fact, 
there  has  never  been  a  time  when  the  natural  monopoly 
of  land  pressed  harder  on  men  than  when  there  was  no 
private  property  in  land  at  all.  Hunting  and  pastoral 
tribes  do  not  have  private  property  in  land.  What  is 
the  condition,  however,  of  men  in  a  hunting  or  pastoral 
tribe,  when  the  numbers  of  the  population  exceed  that 
which  the  existing  supply  of  animals  (which  is  what  land 
means  to  hunters)  or  of  pasturage  (which  is  what  land 
means  to  a  pastoral  tribe)  will  support?  Our  Indians 
and  the  hordes  of  Asiatics  who  have  invaded  Europe 
offer  ample  evidence  from  which  to  answer  the  question. 

It  is  a  crude  modern  notion  that  property  grows  ration- 
ally and  justly  out  of  labor.  It  does  not,  and  every 
lawyer  knows  that  it  never  has.  Every  act  of  labor 
has  to  be  preceded  by  an  act  of  appropriation  in  taking 


244      EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

the  raw  material  out  of  the  material  product  of  nature; 
that  is,  it  is  inevitably  based  on  this  monopoly  use  of 
land  which  is  so  vehemently  denounced.  The  simplest 
case  is  that  of  the  domestication  of  animals.  For  domes- 
tication, animals  must  originally  be  appropriated  from 
nature,  and  then,  instead  of  being  consumed  directly, 
they  must  be  retained  for  increase,  and  for  secondary 
products,  as  milk,  butter,  eggs,  hair,  wool.  In  time  labor 
is  spent  to  raise  the  breed  and  to  produce  artificial  vari- 
eties, just  as  land  is,  by  cultivation,  turned  into  a  thing 
utterly  different  from  land  as  it  appears  in  the  "Boon 
of  Nature,"  In  spite  of  the  application  of  labor  and 
capital,  the  natural  monopoly  element  never  disappears; 
it  recurs  in  new  form  in  the  case  of  the  specialty  and  rare- 
ness of  the  highly  cultivated  breeds.  Here,  also,  there 
is  an  unearned  increment.  If  we  compare  the  relative 
value  of  horses  and  other  things  in  the  Middle  Ages  with 
the  value  of  horses  and  other  things  now,  it  appears  that 
a  family  which  had  bred  and  sold  horses  from  then  until 
now,  would  have  made  far  greater  profits  than  a  family 
who  had  held  land  and  rented  it  from  then  until  now. 

Under  the  pressure  of  the  natural  monopoly  of  the 
means  of  subsistence,  any  body  of  men  is  doomed  to  ad- 
vance to  a  position  of  general  misery  and  want.  They  will 
be  substantially  equal  under  it,  if  that  is  any  satisfaction 
to  them.  Their  real  and  only  escape  lies  in  the  arts  of 
civilization  and  in  science;  but  if  they  pursue  those  they 
will  have  to  give  up  equality,  and  will  have  to  consent 
that  those  who  lead  the  way  out  shall  enjoy  the  largest 
share  of  the  gains.  They  have  always  consented  to  this, 
not  because  they  loved  the  leaders,  but  because  it  was 
best  for  themselves. 


A  GROUP  OF  NATURAL  MONOPOLIES 

The  means  of  transportation  are  natural  monopolies. 
A  turnpike,  a  canal,  or  a  railroad  from  one  point  to  an- 
other, if  it  could  run  on  a  mathematical  straight  line, 
would  be  a  complete  monopoly  because  there  is  but  one 
such  line.  If  more  and  more  railroads  are  built  until 
they  form  a  net-work,  they  either  form  a  very  highly 
developed  form  of  competition,  in  which  there  are  com- 
plicated factors  united  under  a  very  intricate  combina- 
tion, or  they  run  over  into  artificial  monopolies.  In 
the  former  case  the  legitimate  remuneration  of  the  owners 
of  the  railroad  is  sacrificed;  in  the  latter  case  the  ten- 
dency is  to  take  away  from  the  community  all  advan- 
tage of  the  railroads  by  making  the  people  pay  so  much 
for  it  that  they  are  in  effect  put  back  where  they  would 
have  been  if  there  had  been  no  railroad.  Hence  the 
immense  complexity  of  the  railroad  problem  and  the 
mischief  of  the  various  rough-and-ready  solutions  of  it 
which  have  been  offered. 

The  transmission  of  intelligence  by  telegraph  is  a 
natural  monopoly;  the  mail  and  express  transportations 
are  included  under  transportation  in  general;  and  all 
other  transmission  of  intelligence  by  telegraph  or  tele- 
phone must  be  a  monopoly.  The  physical  difficulties 
of  reduplicating  the  apparatus  within  the  limits  of  space 
where  it  must  be  used  produce  this  necessity. 

The  organization  for  this  purpose  which  has  the  most 
widely  extended  apparatus,  which  can  reach  the  great- 
est number  of  points,  and  which  is  ready  to  take  any 


246       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

business  at  any  time  and  perform  it  with  the  least  doubt 
or  delay,  will  always  have  an  advantage  in  competition 
for  business,  if  there  is  competition,  which  will  enable  it 
to  advance  to  a  monopoly.  The  reasons  lie  in  the  nat- 
ural conditions  of  the  business  and  there  is,  as  yet,  no 
means  known  for  escaping  it. 

The  gas  and  water  supply,  and  apparently,  also,  the 
electric  light  supply  of  a  city  are  natural  monopolies. 
The  reasons  are  chiefly  those  already  given  with  regard 
to  telegraphs;  the  physical  conditions  of  the  space  within 
which  the  apparatus  must  lie  make  it  impossible  to  bring 
competition  to  bear. 

All  literary  productions  are  natural  monopolies.  A 
newspaper  is  a  natural  monopoly;  it  uses  its  name  for  a 
definition  and  limit  of  its  monopoly;  it  exploits  its  rep- 
utation and  its  efiForts  toward  success  all  take  the  form 
of  distinguishing  itself  from  other  journals  and  conquer- 
ing a  field  of  influence  and  profit  which  it  can  maintain 
as  exclusively  as  possible.  The  great  number  of  jour- 
nals tend  more  and  more,  as  they  win  success,  to  become 
individualized  and  then  the  exploitation  of  their  pro- 
ductive power  is  subject  to  the  rules  of  monopoly. 

Every  book  is  a  monopoly,  and  copyrights,  perhaps, 
better  than  anything  else  serve  to  illustrate  the  wide 
range  through  which  monopoly  may  act.  Volumes  are 
printed  which  scarcely  any  one  will  buy.  The  owner 
of  the  copyright  has  an  absolute  monopoly,  but,  there 
being  no  demand,  his  monopoly  is  worthless  —  from 
which  it  appears  that  a  man  cannot  oppress  his  fellows 
simply  because  "he  has  a  monopoly."  From  this  suppo- 
sition upward  there  may  be  all  stages  of  demand  for  a 
book  until  we  come  to  those  which  can  be  sold  by  the  tens 
of  thousands.  The  law  of  copyright  does  not  create 
the  monopoly;    that  lies  in  the  unique  creation  of  the 


A  GROUP  OF  NATURAL  MONOPOLIES   247 

author;  the  law  only  enables  him  to  prevent  any  one 
else  from  exploiting  it,  just  as  it  prevents  one  man  from 
exploiting  another  man's  land.  Neither  does  the  law 
give  him  possession  of  the  ideas  in  the  book  but  only  of 
the  mechanical  form  and  verbal  dress  in  which  they  are 
composed.  Hence  the  customary  coupling  together  of 
patents  and  copyrights  is  incorrect,  for  patents  are 
artificial  monopolies,  while  copyrights  are  natural 
monopolies. 

On  account  of  the  common  element  of  natural  monop- 
oly, the  business  of  a  great  publishing  house  and  the 
business  of  a  great  railroad  have  common  elements  in 
the  economic  principles  on  which  they  are  conducted, 
however  far  apart  the  two  forms  of  business  may,  in  their 
general  character,  seem  to  be. 

A  paper  currency  is  a  natural  monopoly;  banks  did  not 
make  it  a  monopoly.  The  amount  of  money-metal  in 
the  world  being  taken  as  it  is,  the  specie  circulation 
must  be  an  exact  quantity,  and  paper  currency  to  that 
amount  can  be  issued,  and  no  more.  It  may  all  be  is- 
sued by  one  bank,  or  a  thousand  may  compete  for  it, 
but  its  total  is  limited  in  value  amount.  If  more  should 
be  issued,  it  would  depreciate  so  that,  at  least,  its  value 
would  not  exceed  the  specie  which  it  displaced. 

Finally  all  forms  of  personal  excellence,  superiority, 
skill,  and  distinguished  attainment  constitute  natural 
monopolies  and  find  their  reward  under  applications  of 
the  monopoly  principle.  The  doctrine  of  non-compet- 
ing groups  in  industry  is  simply  a  case  of  monopoly. 
Those  men  who  enter  into  the  industrial  organization 
armed  only  with  muscular  power  and  without  natural 
or  acquired  power  to  distinguish  them  from  brutes  or 
machines  are  on  a  dead  level  of  competition  with  brutes 
or  machines;    then  every  advancing  grade  of  acquire- 


248      EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ment  forms  the  basis  of  a  new  and,  generally  speaking, 
less  numerous  group  of  persons.  Every  such  group  of 
higher  and  higher  specialization  is  protected  in  its  higher 
advantages  by  the  principle  of  monopoly.  When  we  try 
to  stimulate  our  young  men  to  work  and  study,  and  to 
the  improvement  of  their  youth,  we  declare  to  them 
that  every  attainment  which  they  make  will  secure  to 
them  command  over  the  ills  and  chances  of  life;  but  we 
have  no  guarantee  for  the  truth  of  what  we  say  except  in 
the  monopoly  advantage  which  comes  from  superiority. 
The  professions,  in  general,  owe  their  superior  advantage 
to  the  double  fact  that  they  are  occupied  with  personal 
services  in  which  machines  cannot  compete,  and  that  the 
natural  monopoly  in  them  is  hedged  about  by  high 
acquirements  which  cost  long  effort  and  large  expen- 
diture of  capital. 

From  these  instances  and  those  which  I  gave  in  a  for- 
mer place  it  is  evident  that  "monopoly"  is  not  what  it 
is  often  called  in  current  declamation.  Monopoly  is 
not  an  invention  of  man,  least  of  all  a  modem  invention; 
nor  is  it  a  product  of  "capitalistic  society";  it  is  inter- 
woven with  the  whole  life  of  man  on  earth,  in  all  its  forms 
and  from  the  earliest  times.  It  is  not  now  at  one  pole 
of  society,  with  competition  and  liberty  at  the  other; 
they  meet  and  shade  off  into  each  other  at  a  common 
boundary.  It  is  not  reasonable  to  denounce  natural 
monopolies,  because  if  they  are  founded  in  the  order  of 
nature  no  one  is  to  blame  for  them,  and  nothing  can 
modify  them  but  such  applications  of  intelligence  as 
may  change  their  form  or  combine  their  action  with  new 
forces.  Neither  are  natural  monopolies  all  or  always 
mischievous;  they  have  very  great  utility  and  advantage. 
It  is  therefore  an  abuse  to  use  "monopoly"  as  a  word  of 
sweeping  and  self-evident  condemnation. 


ANOTHER   CHAPTER   ON  MONOPOLY 

In  preceding  pages  I  have  analyzed  and  discussed  some 
leading  and  typical  forms  of  natural  monopoly.  It  is 
easily  perceived,  upon  a  view  of  facts,  that  monopoly 
is  in  the  order  of  nature,  and  that  it  predominates  over 
all  the  most  fundamental  relations  of  man  to  the  earth 
on  which  he  lives.  It  is  not  a  product  of  civihzation, 
or  a  result  of  the  capitalistic  organization  of  society,  or 
an  invention  of  the  bourgeoisie,  as  is  so  often  asserted. 
If  then  any  one  desires  to  declaim  against  it,  he  must 
understand  that  he  is  at  war,  not  with  human  institu- 
tions, but  with  facts  in  the  order  of  the  universe. 

Civilization  is  in  fact  one  long  struggle  against  the 
natural  monopoHes  which  have  been  described,  or,  more 
accurately,  it  is  an  attempt  to  set  one  of  them  against 
another.  When  man  domesticated  animals,  and  made 
of  them  beasts  of  draught  and  burden,  he  got  one  of  the 
natural  monopohes  on  his  side  as  an  instrument  with 
which  to  fight  against  the  monopoly  of  the  land;  when 
he  discovered  fire,  he  got  a  natural  force  on  his  side  which 
was  of  immense  help  to  him  in  contending  with  all  the 
other  limitations  of  his  position.  Wind,  falling  water, 
steam  and  electricity  are  all  natural  agents  which  man 
has  learned  to  subdue  to  his  service  in  his  contests  with 
nature.  Therefore,  whatever  emancipation  from  the 
extremest  hardships  of  earthly  existence  —  whatever 
liberty  —  man  has  won,  has  been  won  by  civilization, 
and  therefore  also,  at  every  new  stage,  the  old  natural 
monopolies  have  persistently  reappeared,  only  in  a  much 


250       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

modified  form.  At  the  same  time  this  civilization  has 
cost  mankind  many  inconveniences  and  it  has,  in  many- 
respects,  involved  experiences  which  we  do  not  like.  It 
has  subjected  us  to  drill  and  discipline;  the  civilized 
man  is  disciplined  in  his  feelings,  modes  of  action,  the 
use  of  his  time,  his  personal  relations,  and  in  all  his  rights 
and  duties.  As  civilization  goes  on  the  necessity  grows 
constantly  more  imperative  that  any  man  who  proposes 
to  pass  his  life  in  the  midst  of  a  civilized  society  must 
find  a  place  in  its  organization  and  conform  to  its  condi- 
tions. At  the  same  time  the  civilized  man,  instead  of 
living  instinctively,  as  his  ancestors  did  only  a  few  cen- 
turies ago,  has  become  a  rationalizing  animal.  He  reflects 
and  deliberates;  he  makes  deductions  and  generalizations. 
For  a  century  at  least  he  has  been  fed  with  a  litera- 
ture saturated  with  tremendous  dogmas  about  the  rights 
of  man,  liberty,  etc.,  etc.  —  dogmas  which  are  adequate 
to  furnish  a  foundation  for  unlimited  political,  economic, 
and  social  speculation.  The  facts  of  the  social  order 
do  not  correspond  with  the  deductions  from  these  great 
dogmas.  Consequently  we  have  a  whole  literature  of 
denunciation;  of  social  theory  to  span  the  gap  between 
the  two;  of  superficial  scholarship  about  primitive  prop- 
erty; of  sentimental  lamentation  and  aspiration.  In 
all  this  there  is  no  apparent  appreciation  of  the  differ- 
ence between  what  is  natural  law  and  what  is  human 
institution;  what  is  fruitful  investigation  of  facts  and 
what  is  idle  romancing;  and  the  reigning  confusion  is 
shown  best  of  all  by  the  way  in  which  the  most  powerful 
and  legitimate  engines  of  scientific  advance  are  confused 
with  the  abuses  of  generalization  and  speculation,  and 
all  thrown  away  together,  while  whims  and  fads  are 
eagerly  seized,  if  they  have  only  the  ethical  or  statistical 
varnish. 


ANOTHER  CHAPTER  ON  MONOPOLY         251 

Now  a  civilized  society  exists  on  an  artificial  level. 
The  domestic  animals  which  we  use  are  not  the  ones 
which  nature  gave  us;  they  have  been  brought  by  the 
labor  and  ingenuity  of  man  so  far  away  from  their  orig- 
inal type  that  we  do  not  always  know  what  the  latter 
was.  The  grains,  fruits,  and  vegetables  which  we  eat 
are  not  any  which  nature  gave  us;  we  have  transformed 
them  out  of  all  semblance  to  their  original  types.  The 
clothes  which  we  wear  were  never  given  to  us  by  nature; 
between  anything  given  by  nature  and  the  shoes,  hats, 
coats,  and  dresses  which  we  wear,  lies  a  history  of  thou- 
sands of  years  of  labor,  experiment,  ingenuity,  and 
caprice.  Our  houses  were  not  given  to  us  by  nature; 
a  modern  house  has  a  history  thousands  of  years  long 
when  we  call  to  mind  the  steps  of  invention  and  experi- 
ment, and  the  thousand  converging  lines  of  discovery 
and  invention  of  details  which  have  gone  to  make  it. 
So  one  might  go  on  indefinitely,  but  it  is  plain  that  the 
whole  environment  of  a  civilized  man  is  artificial.  He  has 
cut  himself  off  by  his  clothes,  his  house,  his  fuel,  his 
lights,  and  so  on,  from  the  influence  of  the  natural  envi- 
ronment —  climate,  weather,  soil,  vegetation  —  and  has 
made  a  world  for  himself  on  a  new  plane.  The  price 
which  he  has  had  to  pay  for  this  has  been  persistent  labor 
and  constant  accumulation  of  capital;  he  has  to  submit 
to  organization;  he  has  to  take  a  place  in  the  social  or- 
ganization and  seek  his  own  welfare  as  a  component  in 
the  great  organized  onslaught  made  by  the  race  on  na- 
ture to  make  her  yield  the  comforts  of  existence.  In 
doing  this  he  has  to  sacrifice  that  liberty  which  consists 
in  doing  as  he  likes.  He  has  been  taught  that  this  lib- 
erty is  his  birthright,  and  that,  together  with  it,  he  ought 
to  get  ease  and  comfort;  but  the  man  who  revolts  against 
society  and  breaks  out  of  the  organization,  suffers  even 


252       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

worse  penalties  now  than  he  did  in  the  lower  forms  of 
society,  when  a  nomad  horde  or  a  hunting  tribe  expelled 
a  dissenter.  Likewise  the  real  hardships  of  our  social 
order  come  when  one  is  thrown  out,  or  falls  out,  himself 
innocent,  from  the  organization. 

The  ancient  classical  civilization  was  founded  on  an 
enormous  consumption  of  human  power:  the  whole 
fabric  was  maintained  by  the  expenditure  of  slave  power 
underneath,  and  the  weight  of  it  became  so  great  that 
the  slaves  could  not  and  would  not  increase  in  numbers 
suflBciently  to  bear  it,  while  the  ruling  body  lost  the 
power  to  conquer  more  nations  and  bring  in  new  resources 
of  enslaved  men.  Modem  civilization  is  built  upon 
machines  and  natural  agents,  brought  into  play  through 
machines,  that  is,  through  capital.  Herein  lies  the 
true  emancipation  of  men  and  the  true  abolition  of  sla- 
very. Then  come  these  two  questions:  (1)  can  we  keep 
the  advantages  and  comforts  of  a  high  civilization,  based 
on  capital,  while  attacking  the  social  institutions  by 
which  the  creation  of  capital  is  secured?  (2)  are  we 
prepared  to  give  up  the  comforts  of  civilization  rather 
than  continue  to  pay  the  price  of  them?  No  one  who 
forms  his  judgments  on  a  study  of  facts  can  answer  the 
first  question  in  the  affirmative;  no  one  who  is  familiar 
with  current  thought  will  say  that  people  are  prepared 
to  give  an  affirmative  answer  to  the  second. 

Moreover,  in  the  modem  civilized  community  the  path 
of  greatest  success  is  that  of  distinguished  service  to  the 
organization.  This  service  is  highest  when  it  consists 
in  accumulating  capital,  in  perfecting  the  organization, 
in  new  inventions  and  constructions,  and  in  skilful  use 
of  the  apparatus.  As  this  goes  on  we  educate,  from 
generation  to  generation,  men  who  are  capable  of  more 
and  more  comprehensive  control.     At  last  a  few  such 


ANOTHER  CHAPTER  ON  MONOPOLY         253 

men,  at  the  head  of  the  great  combinations  which  are 
essential  to  the  support  of  our  social  life  on  its  present 
grade  of  comfort,  are  able,  by  agreement  among  them- 
selves, to  bring  in  again  the  form  of  monopoly  which 
previously  existed,  but  had  for  a  time  been  interrupted. 

Hence  we  get  "trusts"  and  "pools";  but  here  also 
the  question  is :  whether  to  deal  with  the  evil  by  pushing 
on  to  the  next  stage  in  which  the  progress  of  invention, 
or  the  modifications  of  process  are  likely  to  bring  in 
competition  in  a  manner  disastrous  to  the  monopolies, 
or  to  seek  a  remedy  which  will  arrest  the  industrial 
forces  in  their  development  on  which  our  social  well- 
being  depends. 

Finally,  we  must  notice  that  the  monopolists  who 
are  the  commonest,  and  also  the  most  unpopular,  are 
the  man  who  has,  by  the  accumulation  of  capital,  raised 
himself  above  the  grossest  wants  and  hardships  of  life, 
and  the  son  of  such  a  man.  The  former  has  in  this  way 
raised  himself  into  a  position  of  superiority  to  his  fellow- 
beings;  he  has  also  guaranteed  the  latter  against  the 
worst  hardships  of  life  and  given  him  "a  privileged  posi- 
tion," as  it  is  sometimes  called  for  the  sake  of  carrying 
over  to  it  the  odium  incurred  by  artificial  superiority 
and  immunity.  This  case,  however,  brings  me  to  the 
family  as  the  stronghold  of  monopoly. 


THE   FAMILY  MONOPOLY 

In  the  current  discussions  about  property,  rights,  and 
social  relations,  it  is  very  rare  to  see  any  appreciation 
manifested  of  the  connection  between  the  family  and 
property.  Yet  this  connection  lies  at  the  root  of  the 
whole  matter.  The  grandest  and  most  powerful  monop- 
oly in  the  world  is  the  family,  in  its  monogamic  form; 
we  have  sects  which  have  perceived  this  and  made  it  an 
object  of  their  agitation.  They  are  not  large,  and,  for 
obvious  reasons,  they  are  regarded  with  suspicion  and 
abhorrence  by  respectable  people;  but  it  is  undeniable 
that  when  they  inveigh  against  monogamic  marriage 
as  monopoly,  and  against  the  monogamic  family  as  the 
hotbed  of  selfishness,  they  have  facts  to  support  their 
position  which  are  as  true  and  as  much  to  the  point  as 
any  of  the  current  denunciations  of  monopoly  and  self- 
ishness in  reference  to  capital  and  the  industrial  system. 

I  beg  the  reader  to  note  carefully  the  form  and  limits 
of  the  statement  which  I  have  just  made.  The  parallel 
which  I  affirm  is  not  rhetorical,  it  is  in  the  essence  of  the 
facts;  when  I  say  that  one  set  of  assertions  are  as  well 
grounded  as  the  other,  the  force  and  point  of  the  asser- 
tion lie  in  the  "just  as  much  as."  Both  are  correct  as  to 
the  facts  in  a  certain  measure  and  way;  both  are  falla- 
cious as  they  are  ordinarily  asserted  and  employed.  It 
is  not  easy  to  deal  with  the  matter  from  the  side  of  the 
family  within  the  proper  restrictions,  but  the  necessity 
of  a  better  popular  understanding  of  the  general  subject 
is  so  great  that  I  am  compelled  to  try  it. 


THE  FAMILY  MONOPOLY  255 

Speaking  from  the  standpoint  of  social  science,  I 
hold  monogamy  to  be  the  greatest  step  in  the  history  of 
civilization.  This  opinion  is,  it  is  true,  treated  by  some 
sociologists  with  ridicule;  I,  however,  make  bold  to 
hold  it  and  to  believe  that  the  present  generation  is  not 
more  false  to  its  interests  in  any  other  respect  than  in 
its  inadequate  and  distorted  conception  of  what  the 
monogamic  family  yet  needs  in  the  way  of  perfection 
and  sanctity.  I  use  the  last  term  also  with  distinct 
intention,  meaning  thereby  that  religion  has  no  higher 
function,  in  modem  society,  than  to  maintain  all  its 
institutional  effect  on  marriage  and  the  family. 

The  specific  influence  of  the  family  is  exerted  on  women 
and  on  children.  The  monogamic  wife  is  the  only  wife 
who  shares  the  life  of  her  husband.  Some  other  kinds 
of  wives  are  greater  than  their  husbands,  and  some  are 
lower;  the  monogamic  wife  alone  can  have  an  independ- 
ent and  co-ordinate  sphere,  on  an  equal  footing  with 
her  husband,  yet  different  from  his  sphere.  The  chil- 
dren of  a  monogamic  marriage  alone  have  that  home 
life,  that  atmosphere  of  affection  and  care,  which  pro- 
duces the  best  human  beings.  They  alone  get  true  edu- 
cation; for  it  does  not  come  from  books  and  schools, 
it  comes  from  tireless  watching,  patient  training,  per- 
sistent restraint  and  encouragement,  at  the  fire-side 
and  at  all  moments  of  life,  weaving  a  tissue  of  uncon- 
scious habit  into  the  fiber  of  the  life  of  the  future  men 
and  women. 

This  is,  undoubtedly,  an  ideal,  but  it  is  not  an  ideal 
which  floats  in  the  air  as  a  poetic  vision  alone.  It  is 
realized  often  enough  and  sufficiently  in  our  observation 
for  us  to  know  that  it  can  be,  and  is. 

Monogamic  marriage,  however,  is  a  great  monopoly. 
It  is  grand  and  noble  for  those  who  get  into  it,  but  like 


256       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

other  monopolies,  it  wins  an  advantage  for  those  who 
are  included  at  the  cost  of  depression  to  those  who  are 
excluded;  and  millions,  of  course,  in  trying  to  attain  to 
the  heights  of  a  monogamic  marriage,  fail.  If  they  fall, 
they  fall  far  lower  than  they  would  be  under  lower 
forms  of  marriage.  The  children  of  a  monogamic  family 
have  a  far  better  chance  than  those  of  any  other  form 
of  the  family,  provided  the  monogamic  family  realizes 
approximately  its  own  theory;  but  it  is  not  impossible 
that  the  children  reared  in  a  Turkish  harem  may  have  a 
happier  fate  than  the  children  of  a  monogamic  household 
in  which  the  parents  quarrel  or  are  divorced. 

The  monogamic  family  evidently  owes  its  strength 
and  value,  then,  to  the  fact  that  it  constitutes  a  close 
and  solid  unit  with  greater  internal  cohesion  than  any 
other  form  of  the  family,  and  more  complete  severance 
externally  from  every  other  unit.  Its  exclusiveness  is 
of  its  essence;  it  exerts  an  intenser  educating  power 
on  its  members  on  account  of  its  distinctness  and  com- 
parative isolation.  Accordingly  any  form  of  communal 
life,  any  higher  development  of  social  relations,  as  in 
hotel  life  in  this  country,  or  in  the  case  of  fashionable 
life,  where  the  attention  of  the  parents  is  occupied  out- 
side of  the  family,  causes  the  family  life,  the  domestic 
influences,  and  the  family  education  to  suffer. 

The  people  who,  just  now,  are  captivated  by  any 
"altruistic"  notion  cannot  decide  whether  the  family 
is  to  be  included  in  the  sphere  of  the  selfish  or  the  altru- 
istic. Their  quandary  has  its  good  causes  in  the  facts 
of  the  case.  The  selfish  and  the  altruistic  sentiments 
are  inextricably  interwoven,  and  their  interlacings  or  com- 
mon ground  lie  in  the  family  sphere;  but  the  family 
institution,  the  isolated  family  group,  as  a  unit,  sharply 
severed  and  highly  and  distinctly  developed  against  all 


THE  FAMILY  MONOPOLY  257 

other  family  units,  is,  in  fact,  the  hotbed  of  those  senti- 
ments which  are  denounced  as  selfish  —  above  all  such 
of  them  as  are  connected  with  social  rank  and  property. 

The  facts  are  open  to  the  observation  of  all.  "He  that 
hath  wife  and  children  hath  given  hostages  to  fortune." 
If  you  intensify  his  family  affection,  you  will  in  the 
same  degree  absorb  his  energies  in  the  determination 
to  redeem  those  pledges.  If,  therefore,  the  growth  of 
social  institutions  is  in  the  direction  of  monogamy,  if 
we  thereby  win  a  better  position  for  women  and  a  better 
education  for  children,  we  also  intensify  a  man's  feeling 
of  cohesion  with  his  own  wife  and  his  own  children,  aside 
from  and  against  all  the  world;  and  his  and  their  inter- 
ests, while  more  absolutely  identified  with  each  other,  are 
set  in  more  complete  indifference  or  more  pronounced 
antagonism  to  those  of  other  people  than  any  other 
social  arrangement.  This  consequence  is  inevitable  and 
it  plainly  exists.  The  sentiments  which  are  nowadays 
jumbled  together  under  the  head  of  "individualism," 
in  accordance  with  the  general  confusion  and  looseness 
with  which  all  these  matters  are  treated,  are,  in  fact, 
products  of  this  family  sentiment. 

The  selfishest  man  in  the  world  will  pour  out  his  money 
like  water  on  his  children.  A  man  who  fights  all  the 
world  with  pitiless  energy  in  the  industrial  conflict,  will 
show  himseK  benevolent  to  his  family.  It  is  for  them 
that  he  fights.  A  man  of  fifty,  alone  in  the  world,  might 
feel  indifferent  about  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  or 
look  with  comparative  indifference  upon  the  danger  of 
monetary  loss,  but  a  similar  man,  with  a  family  de- 
pendent upon  him,  is  eager  to  win  wealth,  or  is  over- 
whelmed by  anxiety  at  the  danger  of  loss.  It  is  not 
for  themselves  that  men  in  middle  life  work;  it  is  for 
wives  and  children. 


258       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

I,  therefore,  agree  perfectly  with  the  socialists  as  to 
the  facts  of  the  case.  They  have  always  recognized 
the  fact  that  property  and  the  family  are  inextricably 
interwoven  with  each  other  from  their  very  roots  in  the 
remotest  origin  of  civilization.  The  more  logical  they 
are  the  more  fearlessly  they  follow  out  this  fact,  and  at- 
tack the  family  in  order  to  succeed  in  their  attack  on 
property.  It  is  to  be  conceded  to  them,  at  least,  that 
they  can  see  facts  and  estimate  their  significance,  while 
the  sentimentalists  and  semi-socialists  only  muddle  every- 
thing. The  issue  is  a  plain  one,  and  one  which  admits 
of  no  compromise  whatever:  property  and  the  family 
stand  or  fall  together;  we  must  either  maintain  them 
both  with  the  individualists,  or  overthrow  them  both 
with  the  socialists. 

The  people  who  talk  about  rooting  out  monopoly 
will  never  succeed  in  their  undertaking  until  they  root 
out  that  family  monopoly  which  alone  gives  significance 
to  all  the  others.  It  may  be  that  in  some  abstract  sense 
the  earth  was  given  to  all  mankind.  What  I  want  is  a 
piece  of  it  with  which  to  support  my  family.  When  I 
get  it  (which  I  must  do  by  going  on  until  I  find  unoccu- 
pied land,  or  by  a  peaceful  contract  with  some  one  already 
holding  a  monopoly,  unless  I  propose  to  kill  a  monopo- 
list family  in  order  to  put  mine  in  its  place)  I  shall  want 
it  as  a  monopoly,  that  is,  I  shall  want  to  be  sure  that 
my  children,  and  not  any  other  man's,  will  eat  the  crop. 
There  will,  therefore,  be  "private  property  in  land" 
there  and  I  shall  have  no  need  of  the  "state,"  unless  the 
state  means  simply  that  my  neighbors  will  join  with  me 
in  a  mutual  assurance  that  we  can  each  guarantee  the 
existence  of  our  families  by  the  monopoly  of  our  land. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  PROPERTY 

Private  property,  even  private  property  in  land,  exists 
in  some  of  the  most  primitive  forms  of  human  society; 
monogamic  marriage  likewise  exists  in  some  of  the  most 
primitive  and  barbarous  forms  of  society.  It  is  not 
possible  to  construct  any  scale  or  ladder  of  consecutive 
stages  under  either  of  these  heads,  starting  from  some 
most  rudimentary  and  negative  organization,  and  rising 
higher  and  higher,  as  it  approaches  nearer  to  what  now 
exists  in  civilized  states.  It  should  be  understood  that 
no  sociologist,  evolutionist  or  other,  attempts  to  do  any- 
thing of  the  kind.  Evolution  would,  in  fact,  account 
for  and  show  the  necessity  of  retrogressions  and  anom- 
alies, interrupting  any  such  series. 

In  fact,  retrogressions  and  anomalies  meet  us  at  every 
turn,  and  a  scientific  student  of  sociology  is  sure  to  be 
timid  about  those  generalizations  which  seem  the  most 
tempting;  this  is,  in  fact,  the  strongest  reason  for  the 
impatient  rejection  of  the  easy  dogmatizing  which  is  in 
fashion  and  which  has  fastened  upon  property  as  its 
especial  prey.  To  dictate  what  our  neighbors  shall  do 
with  their  property  is,  of  course,  the  next  pleasantest 
thing  to  having  property  of  our  own  at  our  disposition. 
Property  is  the  most  fundamental  and  complex  of  social 
facts,  and  the  most  important  of  human  interests;  it  is, 
therefore,  the  hardest  to  understand,  the  most  delicate 
to  meddle  with,  and  the  easiest  to  dogmatize  about. 
There  is  not  at  the  present  time  any  similar  disposition 
to  dogmatize  about  the  family,  and  it  has  seemed  to  me 


260       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

that  I  could  show  the  error  and  fallacy  of  a  great  deal 
of  the  current  talk  about  property  if  I  should  follow  out 
the  parallel  between  property  and  the  family  and  should 
show  their  intimate  and  mutual  relations  as  social  facts. 

It  is  as  impossible  to  find  the  origin  of  property  as  it 
is  to  find  the  origin  of  marriage,  and  for  exactly  the  same 
reason  —  namely,  that  no  society  could  exist  without 
each.  Marriage  means  reproduction  and  property  means 
nutrition,  and  no  society  could  exist  without  both.  If  a 
man  took  a  plant  or  an  animal  out  of  nature  for  his  own 
support,  he  had  to  appropriate  it  into  private  and  exclu- 
sive property.  Therefore,  it  is  plain  that,  if  property 
is  an  "institution,"  so  is  marriage  an  institution  in  exactly 
the  same  sense  and  in  exactly  the  same  degree.  In 
both  cases  there  is  a  natural  fact,  just  as  essential  to  the 
life  of  the  race  and  just  as  independent  of  human  assent 
in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other;  in  each  case  the  artifi- 
cial construction  bears  the  same  relation  to  the  natural 
fact. 

In  the  lowest  forms  of  society  the  prevailing  germ  of 
the  family  consists  of  a  mother  with  her  child;  it  is  the 
father  who  remains  longest  without  a  place  or  share  in 
the  family.  In  this  form  of  society  we  also  find  the  first 
germ  of  sentiment;  for  the  woman,  although  otherwise 
treated  as  a  beast  of  burden  and  destitute  of  rights, 
almost  always  enjoys  a  degree  of  respect  when  she  is  a 
mother.  In  general,  and  due  allowance  being  made  for 
the  anomalies  already  referred  to,  the  family  organiza- 
tion just  described  is  that  of  the  hordes  which  possess 
property  in  common.  The  men  of  the  horde  conduct 
its  affairs  and  look  upon  the  children,  especially  the  boys, 
as  the  strength  of  the  horde  in  the  future;  they  there- 
fore value  them,  but  they  have  no  rights  "in  severalty" 
over  the  children.     In  countless  instances  it  is  known 


THE  FAMILY  AND  PROPERTY  261 

that  the  father  of  certain  children  was  a  stranger,  a  man 
of  another  tribe,  long  since  departed;  indeed,  the  law  of 
the  tribe  would  not  have  allowed  any  other  sort  of  per- 
son to  become  the  woman's  husband.  With  the  chil- 
dren in  common,  and  the  property  in  common,  we  have 
a  type  of  the  communalism,  not  to  say  communism, 
which  is  so  captivating  to  some  of  our  contemporaries 
among  civilized  man.  It  is  plain  that  the  society,  how- 
ever, is  consistent  in  its  parts,  and  that  its  organization 
is  conducive  to  its  interests.  Investigation  also  shows, 
in  every  case  known  to  me,  that  the  organization  was 
convenient  under  the  economic  circumstances  of  the 
tribe,  and  was  dictated  by  those  circumstances,  except 
when  it  appears  to  have  remained  as  a  survival,  under 
tradition  and  religious  sanction,  into  a  higher  social 
development  for  which  it  was  unfitted. 

Our  modern  students,  then,  searching  into  the  his- 
tory of  property,  find  these  rudimentary  communal 
forms,  and  they  present  to  us  the  result  of  their  work 
as  if  these  facts  carried  with  them  some  proof  as  to  the 
only  correct  or  justifiable  forms  of  property,  or  furnished 
some  criticism  of  present  institutions.  But,  if  the  prim- 
itive forms  of  property  bear  any  authority  as  to  the 
proper  forms  of  property,  why  do  not  the  corresponding 
facts  in  regard  to  primitive  marriage  and  the  primitive 
family  carry  with  them  authority  for  the  criticism  of 
existing  family  institutions?  If  the  fact  that  com- 
munal property  has  existed  widely  in  primitive  society 
goes  to  prove  that  communal  property  is  a  presumptively 
better  or  purer  form  of  property  than  that  which  now 
exists,  why  is  not  the  same  argument  good  in  favor  of 
communal  marriage?  In  fact,  the  fallacy  is  one  which 
is  very  familiar  under  the  form  of  the  ecclesiastical 
dogma  of  "primitiveness." 


262       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Throughout  a  wide  range  of  rudimentary  society 
women  are  treated  as  beasts  of  burden.  When  regarded 
industrially  they  are  drudges  or  slaves.  The  most  dis- 
agreeable work  is  all  put  upon  them.  They  are  therefore 
regarded  as  property,  and  are  assimilated  to  property 
to  such  a  degree  that  the  rights  which  the  men  have 
in  respect  to  women  are  logically  developed  from  the 
notion  of  property  in  the  wives.  The  right  of  property 
in  this  case,  as  in  other  primitive  cases,  rests  upon  force; 
a  man  has  more  wives  than  one  just  as  he  would  have 
more  slaves  than  one,  if  he  could  capture  or  keep  them. 
The  polygamous  form  of  the  family  is  immensely  higher 
than  the  form  last  described;  but,  when  the  man  first 
enters  upon  permanent  relations  with  his  wife  or  wives 
and  his  children,  we  find  him  ruling  by  pure  brute  force. 
"Ruling"  in  this  case  was  not  a  passive  carrying  of 
authority,  but  a  persistent  and  active  domination,  or 
force,  in  the  form  in  which  one  person's  will  overrides  and 
crushes  that  of  others. 

Furthermore,  wives  are  obtained,  in  this  stage  of  soci- 
ety, by  capture;  that  is,  by  force  actively  and  actually 
exerted  against  the  woman,  her  relatives,  and  weaker 
rivals.  No  other  social  arrangement  can  be  mentioned 
in  whose  history  force  has  played  so  large  a  part  as  in 
property. 

Now  it  seems  to  be  believed  that  the  legitimacy  or 
moral  justifiableness  of  property  is  impaired  by  showing 
that  force  has  marked  its  history  and  growth  from  the 
beginning,  and  especially  it  seems  to  be  believed  that 
property  in  land,  the  only  property  sufficiently  permanent 
to  run  back  to  the  times  of  force,  can  be  proved  unjusti- 
fiable, and  its  owners  can  be  dispossessed  in  favor  of 
other  persons,  by  the  power  of  this  learned  investigation; 
but  if  force  proved  against  property  proves  it  illegitimate. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  PROPERTY  263 

why  does  not  force  proved  against  marriage  prove  that 
marriage  is  an  unjustifiable  institution?  If  we  inherit 
property  with  the  taint  of  all  the  ancient  fraud  and  vio- 
lence in  the  form  of  it,  and  in  our  ideas  about  it,  so  do  we 
also  inherit  our  family  institutions  with  the  taint  of  all 
the  old  fraud  and  violence  in  the  form  of  them  which  we 
practise,  and  in  our  ideas  about  them. 

The  women  of  to-day  are  the  true  descendants  of  their 
great-grandmothers  who  were  captured  and  reduced 
to  drudgery;  the  men  of  to-day  owe  their  ideas  about 
women,  and  the  women  of  to-day  owe  their  ideas  about 
themselves,  largely  to  the  traditions  of  the  times  I  have 
mentioned.  Can  we  inherit  the  world  any  otherwise 
than  as  it  comes  to  us.^^  Can  we  study  history  in  the 
hope  of  going  back  to  alter  it?  Can  we  live  to-day  for 
the  sake  of  a  sentimental  attempt  to  redress  the  errors, 
crimes,  and  ignorances  of  the  past  generations?  If  we 
cannot  do  it  with  one  part  of  the  social  organism,  how  can 
we  do  it  with  another? 

To  study  history  in  order  to  observe  the  action  of 
social  forces  and  win  instruction  for  our  own  undertak- 
ings of  to-day  and  to-morrow  is  wise  and  right;  to  study 
history  in  order  to  destroy  anything  which  cannot  be 
shown  to  stand  free  and  clear  of  wrong  in  the  past  is 
revolutionism  and  folly.  The  two  procedures  have  not 
the  remotest  relationship  to  each  other. 

When  the  family  consisted  of  a  woman  and  her  child, 
while  the  father  was  off  hunting,  fighting,  or  playing, 
the  woman  picked  up  a  living  for  herseK  and  her  child 
as  best  she  could.  Property  was  common,  that  is,  she 
had  none  of  it;  the  father  of  her  child  was  sharing  all 
there  was  with  other  men.  "V^^len  the  second  grade  of 
the  family  which  I  have  mentioned  above  came  in,  things 
were  not  much  better;    later,  however,  when  a  woman 


264       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

came  to  be  considered  a  "toy"  she  ceased  to  be  a  drudge; 
when  she  came  to  be  esteemed  as  a  woman  she  lost  value 
as  a  slave  whose  labor  could  be  productively  employed. 
Then,  however,  she  began  to  get  a  share  in  the  use  and 
enjoyment  of  wealth,  if  not  in  the  legal  title  to  it.  Then, 
too,  her  husband  began  to  want  property,  not  as  a  share 
in  a  common  stock  owned  with  his  comrades,  but  as  a 
possession  which  he  could  not  only  consume  and  enjoy, 
but  dispose  of  and  give  away  to  the  wife  and  children  who 
possessed  a  special  and  lasting  claim  on  him.  Of  course 
this  distinction  between  participating  in  a  momentary 
enjoyment  of  a  common  stock,  and  "having  and  holding'* 
things,  so  as  to  dispose  of  them,  is  of  immeasurable 
importance  in  the  theory  of  property.  What,  then,  is 
the  authority  for  us,  as  regards  our  institutions,  of  any 
facts  about  property  as  it  existed  where  "having  and 
holding"  was  unknown?  But  it  is  plain  that  the  devel- 
opment of  the  family  was  what  drew  in  its  train  an 
imperative  necessity  for  goods  to  have  and  to  hold  and 
to  dispose  of.  A  permanent  family  bond  led  to  a  per- 
manent property  title. 

The  most  reasonable  explanation  of  the  different  forms 
of  marriage  which  has  been  proposed,  due  allowance 
being  made  for  anomalous  cases,  is  that  they  have  been 
due  to  variations  in  the  conditions  of  the  struggle  for 
existence.  Polyandry  has  existed  where  the  conditions 
of  life  have  been  hard,  and  the  cost  of  offspring  great. 
Polygamy  has  not  always  been  expensive;  where  women 
have  been  drudges  they  have  not,  of  course,  been  costly. 
The  decline  of  polygamy,  however,  in  connection  with 
the  advance  of  luxury,  has  been  distinctly  traceable  to 
considerations  of  expense,  that  is  to  say,  of  property. 
The  development  and  perfection  of  the  monogamic  fam- 


THE  FAMILY  AND  PROPERTY  265 

ily  is  an  affair  of  expense.  As  luxury  grows,  and  the 
demands  made  on  life  by  man  on  his  own  behalf,  and 
on  behalf  of  his  wife  and  children,  advance,  the  necessity 
for  capital,  and  for  exclusively  appropriated  capital, 
advances  in  a  disproportionate  ratio.  Here,  then,  we 
have  another  series  of  facts  bearing  in  the  most  impor- 
tant manner  on  the  relations  of  family  and  property. 

The  monogamic  family,  with  its  legitimacy  of  de- 
scent, and  the  undivided  devotion  of  the  parents  to  a 
single  group  of  offspring,  has  become  the  seat  of  family 
ambition  and  pride,  reaching  out  in  both  directions. 
The  parents  have  learned  sacrifice  for  the  children  and 
pride  in  their  success.  The  strain  of  the  parents  to  pro- 
vide education  and  preparation  for  success  in  life  on  the 
part  of  their  children,  and  the  happiness  won  by  them 
from  their  children's  success  are  as  important  as  the  more 
familiar  form  of  family  pride  which  is  felt  by  children 
in  a  view  back  upon  their  ancestry.  Every  step  in  the 
achievement  of  family  ambition  requires  property,  and 
requires  it  in  disproportionate  measure  as  the  expense 
of  education  and  the  whole  standard  of  living  rises.  We 
hear  constantly  about  the  development  of  character,  etc., 
in  contrast  with  the  accumulation  of  property;  it  is  one 
of  the  crudest  and  most  superficial  of  the  commonplaces 
now  in  fashion;  the  accumulation  of  property  is  no  guar- 
antee of  the  development  of  character,  but  the  develop- 
ment of  character,  or  of  any  other  good  whatsoever,  is 
impossible  without  property.  It  is  only  in  transcenden- 
tal visions  that  people  use  a  jargon  of  culture  in  which 
they  seem  to  cut  loose  from  the  limitations  of  fact;  when 
they  return  to  the  level  of  facts  it  is  always  found  that 
their  speculations  have  not  strengthened,  but  have 
weakened,  human  nature. 

On  the  plain  level  of  facts,  then,  it  appears  that  the 


266       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

possession  and  application  of  exclusively  appropriated 
products  to  the  advantage  of  specific  individuals  is  an 
inevitable  condition  of  the  education  and  preparation  of 
children  for  success  in  life;  and  that  the  acquisition 
of  property  consequently  must  absorb  more  and  more 
of  the  zeal  of  civilized  men  as  the  monogamic  family  is 
more  and  more  developed.  Furthermore,  in  proportion 
as  the  love  of  parents  is  intensified  by  the  development 
of  the  monogamic  family,  the  father's  mind  will  reach 
out  with  more  intense  longing  to  the  future,  and  he  will 
desire  to  secure  his  children  against  the  ills  of  life  so  far 
as  that  can  be  done  by  a  provision  of  capital.  There 
are  very  few  men,  also,  who  ever  have  the  power  to 
"found  a  family,"  and  who  rise  superior  to  the  ambition 
of  doing  so.  The  tide  of  popular  prejudice  is  running 
strongly  against  some  of  these  feelings  and  sentiments, 
but  where  are  the  signs  that  they  are  felt  any  less  in- 
tensely now  than  formerly?  or  that  they  are  felt  any  less 
intensely  in  this  country  than  in  old  countries? 

The  family  sentiment  is  the  most  essentially  conserv- 
ative force  which  exists.  If  each  generation  spends 
itself  to  advance  the  next,  we  see  the  motive  force  of  a 
constantly  advancing  struggle  against  nature.  It  is 
appalling  to  look  at  history  and  see  how  impossible  it 
has  been  to  maintain  any  regular  or  steady  advance  of 
this  kind;  families,  generations,  and  states  have  gained 
a  little  for  a  time,  and  then  it  has  all  been  swept  away 
in  some  social  convulsion.  No  doubt  it  must  always  be 
so.  One  generation  will  be  sacrificed  without  advancing 
the  next,  but  the  family  affection  and  devotion  come  in 
here  to  reinforce  the  deathless  hope,  and  here  to  renew 
the  never-ending  struggle  on  which  all  civilization  de- 
pends. Moreover,  the  family  sentiment  aims  to  hold 
and  defend  what  has  been  achieved;    it  therefore  often 


THE  FAMILY  AND  PROPERTY  267 

comes  in  conflict  with  the  new  and  rising  forces,  and  pre- 
sents itself  in  the  guise  of  a  conservative  force  which  is 
obstructive.  The  family  security  which  has  been  ob- 
tained, and  which  is  guaranteed  by  property  rights, 
comes  to  stand  across  the  path  of  struggle  to  security 
for  some  new,  and  as  yet  unsecured,  family  interests. 

K  now  there  is  anything  in  our  modern  society  upon 
which  we  may  look  with  complacency  when  we  com- 
pare it  with  any  older  form  of  society,  it  is  the  fact  that 
our  family  ambition  has  gained  depth  and  solidity  and 
sobriety.  In  place  of  court  intrigues  for  place  and  rank, 
we  have  earnest  and  honest  endeavor,  maintained  by 
wide  sections  of  the  population,  employing  honorable 
means,  enjoying  a  reasonable  hope  of  success,  and  directed 
toward  sober  and  commendable  ideals.  In  place,  there- 
fore, of  the  clash  of  sordid  interests  on  a  narrow  arena, 
and,  often  enough,  employing  destructive  means,  we  have 
a  spontaneous  effort  of  the  whole  mass  of  the  popula- 
tion. It  manifests  itself  chiefly  in  the  strain  to  win 
wealth  and  to  secure  property.  It  is  one  of  the  marks 
of  our  time.  The  moralists  and  socialists  who  set  them- 
selves against  it  bear  loudest  witness  to  the  fact  that  the 
tendency  exists,  and  that  nothing  can  arrest  it.  Their 
invectives  against  capital  in  the  hands  of  those  who  have 
it  are  double-faced,  and,  when  turned  about,  are  nothing 
but  demands  for  capital  on  behalf  of  those  who  have  it 
not,  in  order  that  they  may  do  with  it  just  what  those 
who  now  have  it  are  doing  with  it.  There  are  some  who 
talk  with  singular  fatuity  about  a  time  when  men  worked 
not  to  win  wealth,  but  to  get  a  living.  When  was  that 
time.f^  It  was  when  they  could  not  get  a  living  by  all 
the  work  they  could  do.  When  did  they  begin  to  work 
to  win  wealth?  Just  when  there  was  a  chance  that  by 
work  wealth  might  be  won. 


268       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

We  see,  then,  that  the  interests  of  property  are  all 
interwoven  with  family  sentiments,  and  that  this  is  the 
reason  for  their  very  great  strength;  also  that  they  are 
interwoven,  through  and  by  the  family  sentiments, 
with  the  very  fiber  of  civilization.  Now  comes  the 
question:  how  is  any  one  to  destroy  or  reconstruct  the 
doctrine  of  property,  and  the  conception  of  the  right  of 
property,  on  any  a  priori  or  "ethical"  grounds?  Every 
one  whom  it  is  intended  thus  to  affect  will  respond  that 
you  threaten  the  interests  for  which  he  works  and  lives. 
You  tell  him  that  he  is  strong  by  virtue  of  his  property 
and  that  you  propose  to  rob  him  of  it.  Why  will  he  not 
use  his  strength  to  defend  his  interest?  You  threaten 
the  future  of  his  children,  and  expect  that  he  will  not 
defend  it,  although  at  the  same  time  you  denounce  him 
for  being  so  strong  that  he  is  dangerous.  You  assail 
his  patrimony,  and  expect  him  to  expend  it  for  his  own 
destruction,  all  out  of  respect  to  "ethics."  Hitherto  in 
history  the  family  interest  has  been  able  to  exert  ingenu- 
ity sufficient  not  only  to  defeat  every  device  which  the 
law-makers  have  invented  to  restrain  it,  but  also  to  use 
those  very  devices  to  attain  its  purposes.  Yet  we  are 
gravely  told  now,  and,  in  one  breath,  that  capital  never 
was  as  strong  as  it  is  now,  and,  in  the  next,  that  the  most 
puerile  devices  are  about  to  fetter  capital  and  deprive  it 
of  its  power. 

Property  is  dear  to  men,  not  only  for  the  sensual  pleas- 
ure which  it  can  afford,  but  also  because  it  is  the  bul- 
wark of  all  which  they  hold  dearest  on  earth  —  above  all 
else  because  it  is  the  safeguard  of  those  they  love  most 
against  misery  and  all  physical  distress.  It  is  marvel- 
ous to  hear  the  attempts  which  are  made  to  devise  a 
theory  of  property  as  a  foundation  for  the  state  or  for 
social  science.     Property  gives  the  theory  to  all  the  rest. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  PROPERTY  269 

The  reason  why  I  defend  the  millions  of  the  millionaire  is 
not  that  I  love  the  millionaire,  but  that  I  love  my  own 
wife  and  children,  and  that  I  know  no  way  in  which  to 
get  the  defense  of  society  for  my  hundreds,  except  to 
give  my  help,  as  a  member  of  society,  to  protect  his 
millions. 


THE   STATE  AND   MONOPOLY 

A  RECENT  Russian  writer  has  said:  "It  is  recognized 
as  the  highest  principle  of  economic  science  by  the  new- 
est school  in  the  West  of  Europe,  that  the  government 
is  under  obligation  to  take  upon  itself  the  management 
of  economic  relations  in  the  country,  and  especially  to 
care  for  the  interests  of  the  lowest  and  least  secure 
classes  of  the  population.  In  this  respect  our  govern- 
ment stands  in  a  far  more  satisfactory  position  than  the 
Western  European  governments.  The  civil  authority 
amongst  us  has,  from  of  old,  taken  the  most  active  part 
in  the  regulation  of  the  economic  relations  of  the  people, 
while,  in  the  West,  such  intervention  of  the  government 
in  the  economic  life  of  the  people  constitutes  one  of  the 
pious  hopes  of  the  newest  school  of  economists,  the 
Katheder-socialisten . ' ' 

I  do  not  see  how  the  claim  here  put  forward  on  behalf 
of  Russia  can  be  successfully  resisted.  If  Western 
Europe  and  the  United  States  are  really  to  adopt  the  plan 
of  regulating  interests  by  the  management  of  public 
functionaries,  then  they  must  be  prepared  to  admit  that 
the  traditions  of  civil  liberty,  and  the  principles  of  juris- 
prudence, which  have  guided  Western  civilization  for  a 
thousand  years,  are  all  at  fault,  and  that  Russia  has  all 
the  time  been  on  the  right  track.  We  must  come  to 
regard  the  tchinovnik,  or  functionary,  not  as  a  bugaboo 
of  Russian  novels,  but  as  the  true  agent  of  civilization. 
The  more  objectively  and  inductively  we  are  disposed 
to  study  social  questions,  the  more  zealously  we  should 
apply  ourselves  to  the  study  of  the  Russian  model. 


THE  STATE  AND  MONOPOLY  271 

No  one  has  ever  succeeded  in  formulating  a  precept  for 
distinguishing  and  defining  the  field  of  action  of  the 
state,  when  approaching  it  from  the  negative  side.  It 
appears  to  be  impossible  to  formulate  such  a  precept, 
for  the  cases  must  be  decided  as  they  arise.  It  is  alto- 
gether a  matter  of  expediency.  As  such  it  may  be  sub- 
ject to  general  maxims,  whose  application  to  particular 
cases  must  be  controlled  by  good  sense  and  sound  judg- 
ment. The  statesman  must  be  a  man  of  sagacity,  cul- 
tivated judgment,  practical  experience,  broad  observation, 
and  acute  perception  in  regard  to  the  relation  of  means 
to  ends;  he  cannot  fill  his  position  by  doing  nothing. 

But  if  it  is  difficult  to  define  the  function  of  the  state 
from  the  negative  side,  and  to  say  that  the  state  should 
do  only  this  or  that,  what  shaU  be  said  of  the  attempt  tb 
define  it  positively.'*  If  we  seek  to  give  a  charter  to  the 
state,  that  it  may  interfere,  and  to  found  interference 
on  ''principles"  of  morality  and  expediency,  we  find 
ourselves  floundering  in  pueriKties  and  pedantic  general- 
izations. Such  generalizations  have  been  put  forth,  and 
the  complacency  with  which  they  are  propounded,  in 
connection  with  their  obvious  ineptitude,  is  among  the 
prominent  features  of  work  in  social  science  at  the  pres- 
ent time.  It  has,  for  instance,  been  said  that  the  natural 
monopolies  constitute  a  definition  of  the  field  of  legiti- 
mate control  by  the  state,  and  it  has  been  repeated  so 
often,  in  one  form  or  another,  that  it  has  become  a  sort 
of  current  dogma,  as  if  a  solution  had  been  found  which 
is  at  least  good  as  far  as  it  goes.  The  test  of  any  such 
dogma  is  to  see  whether  it  contains  all  the  necessary 
inclusions  and  exclusions  so  as  properly  to  mark  off  the 
ground  which  it  pretends  to  define. 

Life  insurance  is  not  a  natural  monopoly,  but  I  sup- 
pose that  no  one  would  deny  that  life  insurance,  on 


272       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

grounds  of  expediency,  offers  one  of  the  most  reasonable 
and  proper  occasions  for  state  regulation  of  a  sound  kind. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  state  regulation  of  life  insurance  has 
been  outrageously  abused,  showing  how  difficult  it  is  to 
execute  regulation  wisely  and  righteously  even  where 
its  legitimacy  may  be  defended.  But  the  grounds  of 
state  regulation  in  the  expediency  of  the  case  still  remain. 
Life  insurance  is  a  mystery  to  all  except  those  who  make 
a  study  of  it;  one  party  to  the  contract  acts  ignorantly 
and  in  the  dark;  the  equities  which  arise  from  the  rela- 
tion of  insurer  and  insured  are  subtle  and  complicated, 
and  so  the  insured  cannot,  for  various  and  obvious  rea- 
sons, defend  his  interests.  If  then  the  state  adopts  gen- 
eral regulations  for  the  conduct  of  that  business,  which 
are  germane  to  the  nature  of  the  business,  and  which 
will  prevent  the  insurer  from  perpetrating  a  swindle 
and  give  confidence  to  the  insured,  we  have  a  case  where 
the  grounds  for  state  interference  to  prescribe  methods 
and  fix  responsibility,  are  as  strong  as  in  any  case  which 
can  be  mentioned.  It  is  not,  however,  a  case  of  monop- 
oly, so  that  the  dogma  of  interference  with  natural 
monopolies  fails  to  include  one  of  the  widest,  most  im- 
portant, and  least  questioned  of  the  interferences  now 
practised  by  civilized  states. 

In  preceding  pages  I  have  defined  and  discussed  repre- 
sentative cases  over  the  whole  field  of  natural  monopoly; 
and  among  the  other  cases  it  was  shown  that  literary 
productions,  whether  books  or  periodicals,  are  cases  of 
natural  monopoly.  If  the  state  is  to  regulate  natural 
monopolies,  the  moral  grounds,  and  the  grounds  of  expe- 
diency, for  regulating  literary  productions,  are  stronger 
than  those  for  regulating  any  other  monopoly.  The 
moral  grounds  for  a  censorship  of  the  press  are  far  stronger 
than  the  similar   grounds  for  regulating  trusts,  adulter- 


THE  STATE  AND  MONOPOLY  273 

ation  of  groceries,  factory  ventilation,  child  labor,  and 
so  on,  because  the  moral  corruption  of  bad  hterature  is 
far  more  destructive  to  social  interests  than  the  other 
bad  things  against  which  the  other  regulations  guard. 
There  is  no  case  in  which  the  advocates  of  non-interfer- 
ence rely  so  entirely  on  "general"  principles,  dogmatic 
abstractions,  and  a  'priori  assumptions  as  when  they 
argue  in  favor  of  freedom  of  the  press  on  a  general  faith 
that,  on  the  whole,  less  harm  comes  from  liberty  than 
from  restraint.  The  argument  for  a  commission  to  regu- 
late "interstate"  literature  is  a  thousandfold  stronger 
than  the  argument  for  a  commission  to  regulate  inter- 
state commerce  or  telegraphs.  On  the  Russian  plan, 
therefore,  a  censorship  of  the  press  is  included. 

The  argument  for  a  regulation  of  the  natural  monop- 
oly enjoyed  by  newspapers  would  be  stronger  still.  TTie 
need  for  informing  the  people  about  public  affairs,  and 
informing  them  correctly,  is  most  important  "in  order 
to  maintain  our  republican  institutions,"  an  argument 
which  is  put  forward  as  conclusive  and  final  in  innumer- 
able other  cases.  A  proposition  might  also  be  formu- 
lated, on  behalf  of  which  a  great  deal  could  be  said,  to 
the  following  effect:  the  state  ought  to  see  to  it  that 
every  social  institution  which  possesses  power  should 
be  loaded  with  a  corresponding  responsibility.  If  such 
a  rule  were  adopted,  it  would  at  once  apply  to  the  news- 
paper press,  for  since  we  have  established  freedom  of  the 
press,  the  newspapers  have  become  a  gigantic  power 
which  is  capable  of  perpetrating,  and  constantly  does 
perpetrate,  wrongs  against  both  public  and  private  rights 
for  which  there  is  no  remedy.  Here  again,  therefore,  we 
should  find  moral  grounds  for  state  regulation  of  the  press. 

Still  again:  I  have  spoken  so  far  only  of  regulation  of 
literature  in  the  interests  of  pubUc  morality  and  polit- 


274       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ical  instruction;  but,  if  there  are  grounds  for  regulating 
the  prices  of  railroad  transportation,  then  there  are  cer- 
tainly reasons  for  regulating  the  prices  of  books  and 
newspapers.  If  the  fact  that  a  railroad  is  paying  10 
per  cent  dividends  is  a  reason  why  its  rates  should  be 
reduced,  why  is  not  the  fact  that  a  newspaper  is  paying 
ten  per  cent  dividends  a  reason  why  its  price  should  be 
reduced?  If  all  the  trusts  are  to  be  crushed,  why  not 
begin  with  the  Associated  Press?  If  it  is  a  reason  to 
legislate  on  the  price  of  a  patented  article  that  the  paten- 
tee has  made  a  fortune,  why  not  fix  the  price  of  James's 
or  Howell's  novels?  or,  stronger  still,  of  the  "Franklin 
Arithmetic"  and  "Appleton's  Encyclopaedia"  ?  In  fact,  if 
the  argumentation  on  these  matters  which  fills  current 
Hterature  had  any  sense  in  it,  we  might  go  on  and  make 
a  serious  argument,  of  a  similar  kind,  to  show  how  and 
why  the  writers  of  "good"  books  should  be  forced  to 
charge  enormous  prices. 

Now,  so  far  as  I  know,  nobody  has  dared  to  propose 
a  censorship  of  literature,  or  a  limitation  on  the  freedom 
of  the  press,  or  state  regulation  of  literature  in  general, 
although  it  is  plain  that  such  regulation  would  be  the 
most  obvious  case  for  state  interference  on  the  broadest 
ethical  grounds.  The  dogma  that  the  state  should  inter- 
fere to  regulate  natural  monopolies  here  fails  because  it 
includes  too  much;  therefore  it  fails,  both  by  inclusion 
and  exclusion,  to  define  the  limits  of  state  interference 
according  to  the  most  received  ethical  principles,  and 
according  to  the  historical  practise  of  civilized  states. 
It  remains  only  a  specimen  of  the  fatuity  with  which 
current  social  discussion  is  afflicted. 

When  a  man  is  ailing,  the  first  thing  which  occurs  to 
himself  and  his  friends  is  that  he  shall  "take  something"; 
from  a  scientific  point  of  view,  however,  the  worst  conse- 


THE  STATE  AND  MONOPOLY  275 

quence  of  "taking  something"  is  that  all  the  symptoms 
presented  by  the  case,  from  that  time  on,  will  be  the  con- 
fused product  of  the  disease  and  the  remedy,  and  it  will 
be  impossible  to  tell  which  symptoms  belong  to  which 
cause.  Therefore  all  chance  of  a  clear  and  careful  diag- 
nosis will  be  lost. 

The  analogy  from  individual  disease  to  social  disease 
is  one  of  the  safest  that  can  be  drawn,  nevertheless  I  use 
it  here  only  to  set  in  more  familiar  light  the  proposition 
which  stands  on  its  own  foundation  of  fact,  that  legisla- 
tion for  the  purpose  of  attempting  a  remedy  for  assumed 
social  disease  is  affected  by  this  radical  vice,  viz.:  it  (the 
legislation)  enters  into  the  subsequent  phenomena  and 
renders  extremely  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  all  efforts 
to  make  a  correct  diagnosis  of  the  case,  to  tell  certainly 
whether  there  is  any  disease  or  not  —  if  any,  what  its 
character;  and  finally,  what  would  be  its  appropriate 
remedy. 

The  most  glaring  case  of  this  vicious  legislation  in  all 
history  is  undoubtedly  the  English  legislation  about 
Ireland  since  1880.  The  legislation  has  so  entered  into 
the  case  that  now  no  data  can  be  obtained  for  a  reason- 
able study  of  it,  in  its  original  or  independent  reality, 
or  for  a  judgment  of  the  effects  of  the  legislation  by 
itself  considered. 

In  our  own  country,  the  most  remarkable  piece  of 
paternal  legislation  that  has  ever  been  passed  is  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Law.  The  political  economy  of 
railroads  is  as  yet  but  very  imperfectly  understood. 
Railroads  constitute  a  natural  monopoly;  such  being  the 
case,  it  follows  that  no  legislation  will  ever  make  them 
cease  to  be  monopolies.  This  observation,  on  its  face 
a  truism,  is,  like  most  truisms,  just  the  thing  which  is 
of tenest  forgotten,  or  whose  significance  is  least  frequently 


276       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

apprehended.  The  monopoly  undergoes  modifications 
as  the  railroad  network  is  extended  and  made  more 
complete,  running  in  all  directions  and  affording  all  pos- 
sible combinations.  The  monopoly  comes  in  again, 
however,  at  later  stages,  in  new  forms,  because  the  fun- 
damental and  irremovable  grounds  for  it  lie  in  the  natural 
facts  of  the  case. 

Whether,  then,  we  take  an  old  country  with  a  dense 
population  and  immense  accumulations  of  capital,  like 
England,  or  a  new  country,  with  a  sparse  population  and 
an  immense  extent  of  territory,  like  the  United  States; 
it  is  not  strange  that  this  monopoly,  going  through  the 
wide  and  rapid  development  which  railroads  have  under- 
gone during  the  last  fifty  years,  should  have  presented 
economic  problems  which  we  have  not  yet  been  able  to 
solve.  It  has  been  as  much  as  we  could  do  to  note  and 
keep  up  with  the  phenomena,  as  they  have  presented 
themselves;  and  when  we  have  attempted  an  analysis, 
it  has  proved  worthless  as  soon  as  it  was  made,  on  account 
of  the  constantly  changing  phases  of  the  case.  Neither 
is  it  subject  for  wonder  that  the  problems  presented 
should  have  differed  somewhat  in  two  countries  so  differ- 
ently situated  as  England  and  the  United  States.  There 
is  every  reasonable  ground  to  believe  that  the  differences 
of  condition  will  call  for  differences  of  railroad  policy. 
In  any  case,  it  seems  to  be  the  plain  dictate  of  right 
reason,  that  we  should  not  hastily  interfere  with  the 
development  of  such  a  gigantic  interest,  under  the  annoy- 
ance of  some  temporary  phase  of  the  problem;  but  should 
get  a  firm  grasp  of  the  facts  before  attempting  anything 
of  the  kind. 

This  we  have  not  done,  and  it  is  certain  from  so  much 
experience  of  the  Act  as  we  have  yet  had,  that  it  was 
not  based  on  any  clear  analysis  or  correct  solution  of  the 


THE  STATE  AND  MONOPOLY  «77 

problem.  However,  when  such  an  act  is  passed,  the 
effort  of  all  concerned  is  to  conform  to  it  if  they  can; 
and  here  commences  the  evil  effect  I  have  described.  In 
so  far  as  they  conform  to  it,  the  phenomena  which  sub- 
sequently present  themselves  are  mixed  products  of  the 
economy  of  railroading  and  of  the  law.  Not  only  this, 
but  the  law  also  has  its  imposing  effect  upon  the  imag- 
ination of  all  concerned  with  the  matter,  and  it  affects 
all  the  assumptions  with  which  they  come  to  the  study 
of  it.  This  is  a  very  common  experience.  After  a  law 
has  been  in  existence  for  ten  or  twenty  years,  and  a  gen- 
eration has  grown  up  which  can  hardly  remember  any- 
thing else,  it  is  almost  impossible  for  them  to  understand 
what  it  would  be  to  be  without  it.  The  worst  ills  from 
which  civilized  nations  suffer  to-day  come  from  just  that 
kind  of  law,  unwisely  adopted  in  the  first  place,  but  now 
regarded  as  a  "bulwark  of  society."  The  Interstate 
Commerce  Law  is  on  the  way  to  become  just  such 
another. 

Every  such  law  when  first  passed  goes  through  a  sort 
of  honeymoon.  The  eyes  of  the  whole  country  are  upon 
the  Executive  when  he  makes  the  first  appointments 
on  the  commission.  The  test  comes  when  it  has  become 
an  old  story;  when  public  attention  has  been  drawn 
away  to  something  else;  when  poHtics  and  patronage 
get  control  of  this  matter  as  of  all  the  rest.  A  com- 
mission for  the  administration  of  executive  business, 
like  the  Civil  Service  Commission,  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  a  committee  endowed  with  discretion  to  pass 
upon  the  interests  of  free  and  equal  citizens,  not  being 
itself  either  executive,  legislative,  or  judicial.  Such 
a  body  will  inevitably  become  the  engine  of  either  one 
interest  or  another  against  the  rest,  or  sink  into  nonen- 
tity.   Such  a  commission  lacks  all  the  guarantees  of 


278       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

justice  and  of  correct  civil  action  which  we  have  estab- 
Hshed  around  our  legislative,  judicial,  and  executive 
institutions.  Those  guarantees,  however,  are  not  arbi- 
trary; they  are  not  playthings;  they  are  institutions 
wrought  out  by  centuries  of  experience  to  meet  neces- 
sities which  lie  in  the  nature  of  men  and  in  the  relations 
of  human  society.  There  is  no  other  view  of  the  rail- 
road problem  which  is  more  tenable  than  this:  that  the 
evils  which  have  been  experienced  have  come  from  a 
gradual  breaking  down  by  statute  of  the  common-law 
obligations  of  common  carriers,  from  which  has  resulted 
a  removal  of  responsibility  from  the  railroads  at  the  same 
time  that  they  were  developing  enormous  power.  The 
solution  would  then  have  lain  in  a  just  definition  of  the 
responsibility  by  law,  acting  under  the  normal  and  well- 
established  institutions  of  our  civil  life. 

An  act  of  paternalism  like  this  could  not  long  remain 
without  offshoots.  This  is  the  most  definite  result  of 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Act  which  has  yet  appeared,  and 
if  the  actual  legislation  along  the  same  lines  has  not  as  yet 
been  great,  nevertheless  every  one  who  watches  legisla- 
tion is  well  aware  of  the  latest  tendency  in  this  direc- 
tion, and  ample  experience  warns  us  what  to  expect.  No 
act  of  legislation  of  this  kind  stands  by  itseK;  its  inev- 
itable tendency  to  encourage  similar  projects  must  be 
taken  into  account  as  a  part  of  it.  Plans  for  "inter- 
state" telegraph,  sleeping-cars,  etc.,  are  already  pro- 
posed, and  a  bill  is  before  Congress  for  an  ''interstate" 
minimum  rate  of  wages.  Thus  do  the  friends  of  a  false 
movement   unwittingly  do  us  the  favor  to  burlesque  it. 

As  experience  of  the  Act  goes  on,  the  inconsistency 
of  its  parts  becomes  more  and  more  evident.  The  pro- 
hibition of  pooling,  the  long  and  short  haul  clause,  and 
the  assumed  distinction  between  local  and  through  traffic 


THE  STATE  AND  MONOPOLY  «79 

are  inconsistent  and,  in  part,  false  to  the  facts.  The 
point,  however,  which  I  wish  to  emphasize  for  my  pres- 
ent purpose  is  that  this  piece  of  legislation  was  produced 
by  a  legislative  compromise  of  opposing  "views,"  no 
view  being  based  on  anything  better  than  popular  clamor, 
hasty  prejudice,  and  poHtical  ambition.  Neither  can 
any  legislation  of  a  similar  kind  on  a  cognate  subject 
ever  be  produced  except  in  the  same  way  and  affected 
with  the  same  vice.  In  strictly  political  matters  that 
fact  does  no  great  harm;  but  in  industrial  matters  it  is 
fraught  with  mischief. 

The  Interstate  Commerce  Act  is  still  under  trial; 
it  is  too  soon  to  make  up  its  record  and  pass  judgment 
on  its  history.  I  have  used  it  here  only  as  a  concrete 
illustration,  the  latest  and  most  important  of  the  attempts 
to  regulate  by  law  and  administrative  machinery  a  case 
of  natural  monopoly  —  perhaps  the  most  difficult  one 
which  the  experience  of  mankind  has  yet  met.  I  have 
not  been  in  a  position  to  examine  and  judge  of  the  alle- 
gations made  by  railroad  men,  especially  in  the  North- 
west, about  the  mischievous  effects  of  the  law;  the  law 
undoubtedly  forms  a  convenient  scapegoat  on  which 
to  charge  the  consequences  of  all  errors  and  faults.  That 
is  another  evil  of  the  law.  It  has  seemed  to  me,  how- 
ever, that  the  law  was  rapidly  working  out  to  a  dilemma 
like  this:  if  the  Act  is  interpreted  as  the  public  expect, 
it  will  do  great  harm  to  the  railroad  business;  if  the 
stress  is  laid  on  the  saving  clause  about  substantially 
equal  conditions,  the  Act  will  be  reduced  to  a  dead  letter. 

I  must  reserve  for  another  essay  the  connection  of 
laws  about  monopoly  with  the  coming  conflict  between 
democracy  and  plutocracy,  which  is  really  the  most 
important  aspect  of  such  laws. 


DEMOCRACY 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY 

One  of  the  most  difficult  things  to  learn  in  social  sci- 
ence is  that  every  action  inside  of  the  social  organism 
is  attended  by  a  reaction,  and  that  this  reaction  may  be 
spread  far  through  the  organism,  affecting  organs  and 
modifying  functions  which  are,  at  the  first  view  of  the 
matter,  apparently  so  remote  that  they  could  not  be 
affected  at  all.  It  is  a  more  simple  statement  of  the  same 
fact  to  say  that  everything  in  the  social  organism  dis- 
places everything  else.  Therefore,  if  we  set  to  work  to 
interfere  in  the  operation  of  the  organism,  with  our  at- 
tention all  absorbed  in  one  set  of  phenomena,  and  regu- 
late our  policy  with  a  view  to  those  phenomena  only, 
we  are  very  sure  to  do  mischief.  The  current  specula- 
tions about  social  policy  and  social  reform  suffer  very 
largely  from  this  error. 

The  organization  of  a  modem  civilized  society  is  in- 
tensely high;  its  parts  are  extremely  complicated.  Their 
relations  with  each  other  are  close,  and  all  the  tenden- 
cies of  our  time  are  making  them  closer;  and  the  closer 
they  are,  the  more  surely  and  immediately  are  inter- 
ferences distributed  through  them.  The  bonds  of  con- 
nection between  them  are  constantly  becoming  more 
delicate  and  subtle;  and  they  are  sublimated,  as  it  were, 
so  that  they  escape  the  observation  of  the  senses.  In  a 
simple  society,  even  though  it  be  on  the  height  of  the 
best  civilization,  all  the  parts  of  the  organization  lie 
bare  to  view,  and  every  one  can  see  the  relations  of 
agriculturist,  transporter,  banker,  merchant,  professional 


284       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

man,  debtor,  creditor,  employer,  and  employee,  in  their 
visible  operation.  In  a  highly  organized  society  as,  for 
instance,  in  a  big  city,  those  same  relations  have  all 
become  automatic  and  impersonal.  They  have  escaped 
from  control;  they  are  regulated  by  assumptions  and 
understandings  that  every  one  is  to  do  so  and  so;  that 
certain  uniform  and  constant  motives,  aims,  and  desires 
will  present  themselves  as  long  as  human  society  en- 
dures; and  that  men  will,  therefore,  continue  to  exert 
themselves  in  a  certain  manner  for  the  satisfaction  of 
their  wants.  This  is  what  we  mean  by  natural  law,  and 
by  the  field  of  a  science  of  society.  If  any  one  will  look 
over  his  dinner  table  the  next  time  he  sits  down  to  din- 
ner, he  can  see  the  proofs  that  thousands  of  producers, 
transporters,  merchants,  bankers,  policemen,  and  me- 
chanics, through  the  whole  organization  of  society  and 
all  over  the  globe,  have  been  at  work  for  the  last  year 
or  more  to  put  that  dinner  within  his  reach,  on  the 
assumption  that  he,  too,  would  do  his  work  in  the  organ- 
ization, whatever  it  is,  and  be  prepared  to  pay  for  the 
dinner  when  it  reaches  him.  All  these  thousands  and 
millions  of  people,  therefore,  have  co-operated  with 
each  other  for  the  common  good  of  all,  without  acquaint- 
ance or  conventional  agreement,  and  without  any  per- 
sonal interest  in  each  other,  under  the  play  of  forces 
which  lie  in  human  nature  and  in  the  conditions  of  human 
existence  on  this  earth. 

Now,  the  organs  of  society  do  not  impinge  upon  each 
other  with  hard  and  grating  friction,  like  blocks  of  gran- 
ite wedged  together.  If  they  did  the  case  would  be 
easier,  for  then  we  should  have  only  a  mechanical  con- 
tact, and  the  relations  would  be  of  a  simple  order.  Neither 
are  the  relations  those  of  an  orchestra,  which  produces 
harmony    by    voluntary    co-operation    under    training. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY  285 

according  to  a  predetermined  scheme,  yet  subject  to 
the  laws  of  harmony  in  sound.  Nor  are  the  relations 
like  those  of  an  army,  where  the  co-operation  is  arbitrary, 
and  enforced  by  discipline,  although  controlled  by  expe- 
diency for  the  attainment  of  an  end  under  set  conditions. 
The  organs  are  elastic  and  they  are  plastic.  They  suffer 
both  temporary  and  permanent  modifications  in  form 
and  function  by  their  interaction  on  each  other,  and  by 
the  arbitrary  interferences  to  which  they  are  subjected 
by  legislation  or  artifice  of  any  kind.  Thus,  for  in- 
stance, it  is  impossible  to  say  how  taxes  will  diffuse  them- 
selves; they  may  force  a  change  in  the  immediate  organ 
on  which  they  fall  —  transporters,  merchants,  bankers 

—  or  they  may  be  transmitted  more  or  less  through  the 
organization. 

It  is  this  elasticity  and  plasticity  of  the  organs  of  soci- 
ety which  give  the  social  tinker  his  chance,  and  make  him 
think  that  there  are  no  laws  of  the  social  order,  no  sci- 
ence of  society;  no  limits,  in  fact,  to  the  possibilities  of 
manipulation  by  "The  State." 

He  is  always  operating  on  the  limit  of  give  and  take 
between  the  organs;  he  regards  all  the  displacement 
which  he  can  accompHsh  as  positively  new  creation;  he 
does  not  notice  at  all,  and  probably  is  not  trained  to  per- 
ceive, the  reaction  —  the  other  side  of  the  change;  he 
does  not  understand  that  he  must  endure  a  change  on 
one  side  for  all  the  change  which  he  affects  on  the  other. 
Since  it  is  so  hard  to  learn  that  exchange  means  exchange, 
and  therefore  has  two  sides  to  it,  a  giving  and  a  taking 

—  since,  I  say  it  is  so  hard  to  learn  this,  and  people  talk 
even  about  buying  and  selling  as  if  they  were  independ- 
ent operations,  a  fallacy  which  is  itself  the  outcome  of 
a  high  organization  with  a  money  system  —  then  it  is 
not  strange  that  it  should  be  so  hard  to  learn  that  all 


286       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

social  change  is  change,  has  two  sides  to  it  —  the  cost 
and  the  gain,  the  price  and  the  product,  the  sacrifice  and 
the  obtainment. 

Hence  we  see  one  fallacy  of  nearly  all  the  popular  prop- 
ositions of  "reform":  they  would  not  be  amiss,  perhaps, 
if  the  change  which  they  propose  could  be  made  and 
everything  else  remain  the  same. 

In  the  proposition  it  is  assumed  that  everything  else 
is  to  remain  the  same.  But  it  is  inevitable  that  other 
things  will  not  remain  the  same;  they  will  all  of  them 
adjust  themselves  to  the  new  elements  which  are  intro- 
duced. If  we  make  a  change  involving  expense,  taxes 
must  be  increased,  and  every  taxed  interest  must  undergo 
a  change  to  fit  it  to  the  new  conditions.  I  know  of  no 
reform  by  state  agency  which  does  not  involve  increased 
taxation. 

Let  us  note  another  fact.  In  the  advancing  organiza- 
tion of  society,  the  tendency  is  all  the  time  to  subdivide 
the  functions,  and  each  one  is  assumed  by  a  different  set 
of  persons;  thus  the  interests  of  living  men  and  women 
become  enlisted  in  all  the  play  of  the  organs,  and  are  at 
stake  in  all  the  legislative  and  other  interferences.  What 
I  have  called  the  elasticity  and  plasticity  of  the  organs 
means  in  fact  the  rights,  interest,  happiness,  and  pros- 
perity of  the  one  set  of  human  beings  versus  the  same 
interests  of  another  set  of  human  beings.  It  is  men  who 
strive,  and  suffer,  and  plan,  and  fight,  and  steal,  and 
kill,  when  the  great  impersonal  and  automatic  forces 
push  them  up  against  each  other,  or  push  group  against 
group.  The  tendency  is  all  the  time  to  go  back  from 
the  industrial  struggle  to  the  military  struggle.  Every 
strike  illustrates  it.  Better  educated  people,  while 
talking  about  respect  for  law,  seize  upon  legislation  as 
the  modern  mode  of  pursuing  the  military  struggle  under 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY  287 

the  forms  of  peace  and  order  —  that  is  to  say,  they  turn 
from  industrial  competition  and  industrial  effort  to  leg- 
islative compulsion,  and  to  arbitrary  advantages  won 
and  secured  through  the  direction  and  the  power  of  the 
state.  When  the  strikers  and  Knights  of  Labor  declare 
that  they  are  going  to  reach  after  this  power,  they  have 
simply  determined  to  contend  for  the  latest  form  of 
force  by  which  to  supersede  the  industrial  struggle  for 
existence  by  a  struggle  of  craft  and  physical  force.  Yet 
there  are  those  who  tell  us  that  this  is  really  a  super- 
session of  the  struggle  for  existence  by  intelligence  and 
"ethical"  forces,  as  if  every  page  of  the  Congressional 
Record  did  not  reveal  the  sordidness  of  the  plans  and 
motives  by  which  it  is  all  controlled. 

Here  comes  in  another  fallacy  in  the  philosophy  of 
state  interference.  Let  the  reader  note  for  himself  with 
what  naivete  the  advocate  of  interference  takes  it  for 
granted  that  he  and  his  associates  will  have  the  admin- 
istration of  their  legislative  device  in  their  own  hands 
and  will  be  sure  of  guiding  it  for  their  purposes  only. 
They  never  appear  to  remember  that  the  device,  when 
once  set  up,  will  itself  become  the  prize  of  a  struggle; 
that  it  will  serve  one  set  of  purposes  as  well  as  another, 
so  that  after  all  the  only  serious  question  is:  who  will 
get  it?  Here  is  another  ground  for  a  general  and  sweep- 
ing policy  of  non-interference.  Although  you  may  be 
in  possession  of  the  power  of  the  state  to-day,  and  it 
might  suit  you  very  well,  either  to  triumph  over  your 
business  rivals  and  competitors;  or  to  bend  to  your 
will  the  social  organ  which  stands  next  to  you,  and  with 
which  you  have  the  most  friction  (as,  for  instance, 
shippers  with  transporters);  or  to  see  your  pet  reform 
(temperance,  for  instance)  marching  on,  you  would  far 
better  consent  to  forego  your  satisfaction,  lest  presently 


288       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

your  rivals,  or  the  railroads,  or  the  liquor-sellers,  should 
beat  you  in  a  political  struggle;  and  then  you  must  sufiFer 
wrong  and  in  the  end  be  forced  to  give  up  industrial  and 
persuasive  methods  altogether  and  devote  your  whole 
energy  to  the  political  struggle,  as  that  on  which  all  the 
rest  depends. 

Of  all  that  I  have  here  said,  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Law  is  the  instance  which  stands  out  in  point  with  the 
greatest  distinctness.  The  shippers  and  transporters, 
the  competing  railroads,  the  people  who  can  extort  passes 
and  those  who  do  not  want  to  give  them,  the  people  at 
way-stations  and  those  at  competing  points,  and  other 
interests  also  which  cluster  about  the  transportation, 
which  is  the  most  important  element  in  the  opening  up 
of  this  great  and  rich  continent,  all  clash  and  struggle 
for  shares  in  the  wealth  which  the  people  of  the  United 
States  produce.  The  contest  has  phases  and  vicissitudes 
of  every  description.  The  politicians,  editors,  econo- 
mists, liiterateurs,  lawyers,  labor  agitators,  and  count- 
less others  who,  in  one  way  or  another,  have  something  to 
make  out  of  it,  join  in  the  struggle,  taking  sides  with  the 
principal  parties,  or  hovering  around  the  strife  for  what 
may  turn  up  in  it.  When  once  the  fatal  step  is  taken 
of  invoking  legislation,  the  contest  is  changed  in  its 
character  and  in  its  arena.  That  is  all  that  is  accom- 
pHshed;  from  that  time  on  the  questions  are:  who  will 
get  this  legislative  power?  Which  interest  or  coalition 
of  interests  (such  as  passed  the  bill)  will  get  this,  the 
decisive  position  in  the  battle,  under  its  control?  Al- 
ready, in  some  of  the  Western  States,  the  next  phase  has 
developed  itself.  The  majority  interest,  by  numbers, 
seizes  the  power  of  the"  state  and  proceeds  to  realize  its 
own  interest  against  all  others  in  the  most  ruthless 
fashion.    That  capital  has  means  of  defense  is  unques- 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY  289 

tionable;  that  it  will  defend  itself  is  certain;  that  it 
cannot  defend  itself  without  resorting  to  all  the  vices  of 
plutocracy  seems  inevitable.  Thus  the  issue  of  democ- 
racy and  plutocracy,  numbers  against  capital,  is  made 
up.  It  is  the  issue  which  menaces  modern  society,  and 
which  is  destined  to  dispel  the  dreams  which  have  been 
cherished,  that  we  were  on  the  eve  of  a  millennium.  On 
the  contrary,  it  will  probably  appear  that  the  advance 
of  civilization  constantly  brings  new  necessity  for  a  still 
more  elevated  activity  of  reason  and  conscience,  and 
does  not  tend  at  all  to  a  condition  of  stability,  in  which 
the  social  and  political  problems  of  the  race  would  reach 
a  definitive  solution. 


DEFINITIONS   OF  DEMOCRACY  AND 
PLUTOCRACY 

All  the  words  in  -ocracy  properly  describe  political 
forms  according  to  the  chief  spring  of  political  power  in 
them:  an  autocracy  is  a  political  form  in  which  the  pre- 
dominant force  is  the  will  of  the  monarch  himself;  an 
aristocracy  is  a  form  in  which  the  predominant  and  con- 
trolling force  is  the  will  of  a  limited  body,  having  the 
possession  of  the  qualities  which  are  most  esteemed  and 
envied  in  that  society;  a  theocracy  is  a  form  in  which 
the  predominant  force  is  some  conception  of  God  and  his 
will,  and,  inasmuch  as  the  will  of  God  can  come  to  men 
only  through  some  finite  channel,  a  theocracy  easily 
passes  into  a  hierocracy,  in  which  the  predominant  force 
is  possessed  and  wielded  by  a  priesthood;  a  bureaucracy 
is  a  form  in  which  the  ultimate  control  of  things  political 
lies  in  the  hands  of  a  body  of  ojQSce-holders.  In  each 
case  the  name  designates  that  organ  which,  upon  ulti- 
mate analysis,  is  found  to  have  the  power  to  say  what 
shall  be  and  what  shall  not  be. 

A  democracy,  then,  is  a  political  form  in  which  the 
ultimate  power  lies  with  the  demos,  the  people.  This 
mass,  however,  while  unorganized,  could  not  express 
its  will  or  administer  the  affairs  of  the  state;  there  has 
never  been  any  state  organized  on  such  a  plan.  The 
demos,  for  political  purposes,  has  always  excluded  women, 
minors,  resident  aliens,  slaves,  paupers,  felons,  etc., 
according  to  the  constitution  in  each  case;  the  "people," 
therefore,  has  always  meant  some  defined  section  of  the 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY  291 

population,  not  the  whole  of  it.  Furthermore,  in  any 
modern  state,  even  a  superficial  study  of  the  current 
phrases  and  accepted  formulae  will  show  that  the  word 
"people"  is  used  in  a  technical  sense  to  mean,  not  even 
the  whole  body  of  legal  voters,  but  a  limited  number  of 
them.  A  writer  who  rages  at  the  idea  that  there  are  any 
"classes"  will,  in  the  next  paragraph,  reiterate  all  the 
current  formulae  about  the  "people,"  and  reveal  by  the 
context  that  he  means  to  distinguish  the  people  as  peas- 
ants, artisans,  and  uneducated  persons,  from  the  rich, 
the  educated,  and  the  banking,  mercantile,  and  pro- 
fessional classes. 

Yet  the  current  dogmas  about  the  rights  and  wisdom 
of  the  people  have  no  truth  whatever,  and  no  moral 
beauty,  except  when  they  are  aflSrmed  of  the  whole  pop- 
ulation, without  any  exception  whatever.  The  dogmas 
in  question  are  not  really  maxims  or  principles  of  actual 
political  life  and  administration;  they  are  sublime  con- 
ceptions of  the  undeveloped  power  of  growth  and  civiliza- 
tion in  human  society.  As  inspiring  ideals,  as  educational 
motives,  as  moral  incentives,  they  have  incalculable 
value;  but  then  they  are  philosophical  and  academ- 
ical generahties,  not  every-day  rules  of  action  for  specific 
exigencies.  When  they  are  once  dragged  down  into  the 
mud  of  practical  politics,  and  are  cut  to  the  measure  of 
party  tactics,  they  are  most  pernicious  falsehoods. 

For  instance,  the  notion  that  a  human  society,  acting 
as  a  whole,  bringing  its  reason  and  conscience  to  bear 
on  its  problems,  traditions,  and  institutions,  constantly 
reviewing  its  inherited  faiths,  examining  its  experiments, 
profiting  by  its  own  blunders,  reaching  out  after  better 
judgment  and  correcting  its  prejudices,  can,  in  the  sweep 
of  time,  arrive  at  the  best  conclusions  as  to  what  is 
socially  true  and  wise  and  just,  that  man  can  get  on 


292       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

earth,  is  a  grand  conception,  and  it  is  true.  If  the  doc- 
trine that  the  people  ought  to  rule,  and  that  the  people 
know  what  is  wise  and  right  means  this,  it  is  true  and 
fruitful.  It  will  be  noticed,  however,  that  this  doctrine 
implies  that  the  people  are  to  embrace  every  element  in 
the  society,  including  all  the  women  and  children,  for  in 
no  sense  could  this  grand  consensus  be  true  unless  it 
was  universal.  It  is  of  its  very  essence  that  the  whole 
voice  should  be  in  it;  it  is  its  catholicity  which  consti- 
tutes its  guarantee.  If  the  feminine  element  is  left  out 
of  it,  its  guarantee  is  gone;  it  is  one-sided  and  imperfect; 
it  is  no  longer  human  and  social;  it  has  sunk  from  the 
grade  of  a  grand  and  inspiring  conception  to  that  of  the 
party  cry  of  a  dominant  interest.  Neither  is  it  true 
if  the  children  are  left  out  of  it,  for  it  is  only  in  the  sweep 
of  time,  after  long  and  patient  revision,  that  the  judg- 
ments have  authority.  It  must  therefore  be  the  work 
of  generations  to  make  those  judgments;  it  is  only  the 
undying  society,  in  its  continuity  and  undistinguished 
generations,  which  can  make  them,  and  if  they  are 
to  be  true,  the  fire  and  hope  of  youth  are  as  essential 
components  as  the  inertness  and  conservatism  of  age. 

Now,  however,  turn  this  same  dogma  into  a  maxim 
that  peasants  and  artisans  are  the  "people,"  that  they 
are  the  depositaries  of  social  and  political  wisdom,  as 
distinguished  from  the  sages  and  philosophers.  Tell 
the  young  man  not  to  worry  about  learning,  to  sneer  at 
culture,  to  spend  his  nights  on  the  street  and  his  Sundays 
reading  dime  novels  and  the  Police  Gazette,  and,  when 
election  day  comes,  to  throw  his  vote  so  as  to  make  a 
political  job  for  himself  or  his  friend;  tell  him  that  this 
is  what  is  meant  by  the  doctrine  that  the  people  ought 
to  rule,  and  that  in  doing  all  this  he  will  be  uttering  the 
oracles  of  political   wisdom  —  then  the  great  doctrine 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY  293 

has  turned  into  one  of  the  most  grotesque  and  mischie- 
vous falsehoods  ever  imagined. 

In  practise,  therefore,  democracy  means  that  all  those 
who  are  once  admitted  to  political  power  are  equal  and 
that  the  power  lies  with  the  numerical  majority  of  these 
equal  units,  li  then  the  political  divisions  form  them- 
selves class-wise,  then  the  most  numerous  class  becomes 
the  demos  and  is  the  depositary  of  political  power.  For 
this  reason  if  we  estabHsh  a  democracy  and  then  set  the 
classes  and  the  masses  against  each  other,  it  is  the  utmost 
treason  against  democracy,  because  it  ingrafts  upon  it 
from  the  start  the  worst  vices  of  social  discord  and  social 
greed  which  have  disgraced  the  older  political  forms. 

A  plutocracy  is  a  poHtical  form  in  which  the  real  con- 
trolling force  is  wealth.  This  is  the  thing  which  seems 
to  me  to  be  really  new  and  really  threatening;  there  have 
been  states  in  which  there  have  been  large  plutocratic 
elements,  but  none  in  which  wealth  seemed  to  have  such 
absorbing  and  controlling  power  as  it  threatens  us.  The 
most  recent  history  of  the  civilized  states  of  Western 
Europe  has  shown  constant  and  rapid  advance  of  plu- 
tocracy. The  popular  doctrines  of  the  last  hundred 
years  have  spread  the  notion  that  everybody  ought  to 
enjoy  comfort  and  luxury  —  that  luxury  is  a  sort  of  right. 
Therefore  if  anybody  has  luxury  while  others  have  it 
not,  this  is  held  to  prove  that  men  have  not  equally 
shared  in  the  fruits  of  civilization,  and  that  the  state  in 
which  such  a  condition  of  things  exists  has  failed  to  per- 
form its  function;  the  next  thing  to  do  is  to  get  hold 
of  the  state  and  make  it  perform  its  function  of  guaran- 
teeing comfort  and  physical  well-being  to  all.  In  the 
mean  time,  with  the  increasing  thirst  for  luxury  and  the 
habit  of  thinking  of  it  as  within  the  scope  of  every  man's 
rights,  the  temptations  of  dishonest  gain  increase,  and 


294       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

especially  are  all  those  forms  of  gain  which  come,  not 
from  defalcation  and  theft,  but  from  the  ingenious  use 
of  political  opportunities,  put  under  a  special  code  by 
themselves.  A  man  who  is  "on  the  make,"  to  use  a 
slang  phrase  produced  from  the  very  phenomena  to  which 
I  refer,  does  not  think  of  himself  as  dishonest,  but  only 
as  a  man  of  the  world.  He  is  only  utilizing  the  chances 
which  he  can  get  or  make  to  win  gain  from  the  conjunc- 
ture of  political  and  social  circumstances,  without  inten- 
tional crime  such  as  the  statute  has  forbidden.  This 
runs  all  the  way  from  the  man  who  sells  his  vote  to  the 
statesman  who  abuses  official  power,  and  it  produces  a 
class  of  men  who  have  their  price. 

The  principle  of  plutocracy  is  that  money  buys  what- 
ever the  owner  of  money  wants,  and  the  class  just  de- 
scribed are  made  to  be  its  instruments.  At  the  same 
time  the  entire  industrial  development  of  the  modem 
world  has  been  such  as  to  connect  industry  with  poHt- 
ical  power  in  the  matter  of  joint-stock  companies,  corpo- 
rations, franchises,  concessions,  public  contracts,  and  so 
on,  in  new  ways  and  in  great  magnitude.  It  is  also  to 
be  noted  that  the  impersonal  and  automatic  methods  of 
modern  industry,  and  the  fact  that  the  actual  superin- 
tendent is  often  a  representative  and  quasi-trustee  for 
others,  has  created  the  corporate  conscience.  An  ambi- 
tious Roman  used  to  buy  and  bribe  his  way  through  all 
the  inferior  magistracies  up  to  the  consulship,  counting 
upon  getting  a  province  at  last  out  of  which  he  could 
extort  enough  to  recoup  himself,  pay  all  his  debts,  and 
have  a  fortune  besides.  Modem  plutocrats  buy  their 
way  through  elections  and  legislatures,  in  the  confidence 
of  being  able  to  get  powers  which  will  recoup  them  for 
all  the  outlay  and  yield  an  ample  surplus  besides. 

What  I  have  said  here  about  the  venaUty  of  the 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY  295 

humbler  sets  of  people,  and  about  the  greed  and  arro- 
gance of  plutocrats,  must  not  be  taken  to  apply  any  fur- 
ther than  it  does  apply,  and  the  facts  are  to  be  taken  only 
as  one's  knowledge  will  warrant.  I  am  discussing  forces 
and  tendencies,  and  the  magnitude  attained  as  yet  by 
those  forces  and  tendencies  ought  not  to  be  exaggerated. 
I  regard  plutocracy,  however,  as  the  most  sordid  and 
debasing  form  of  politicial  energy  known  to  us.  In  its. 
motive,  its  processes,  its  code,  and  its  sanctions  it  is 
infinitely  corrupting  to  all  the  institutions  which  ought 
to  preserve  and  protect  society.  The  time  to  recognize 
it  for  what  it  is,  in  its  spirit  and  tendency,  is  when  it  is. 
in  its  germ,  not  when  it  is  full  green. 

Here,  then,  in  order  to  analyze  plutocracy  further^ 
we  must  make  some  important  distinctions.  Plutocracy 
ought  to  be  carefully  distinguished  from  "the  power  of 
capital."  The  effect  of  the  uncritical  denunciations  of 
capital,  and  monopoly,  and  trust,  of  which  we  hear 
so  much,  is,  as  I  shall  try  to  show  further  on,  to  help 
forward  plutocracy. 


THE   CONFLICT   OF  PLUTOCRACY   AND 
DEMOCRACY 

Not  every  rich  man  is  a  plutocrat.  In  the  classical 
nations  it  was  held  that  the  pursuits  of  commerce  and 
industry  were  degrading  to  the  free  man;  and  as  for 
commerce,  it  was  believed  that  every  merchant  was 
necessarily  a  cheat,  that  he  must  practise  tricks  from  the 
necessity  of  the  case,  and  that  a  certain  ever-active  craft- 
iness and  petty  deceit  were  the  traits  of  character  in  which 
his  occupation  educated  him.  As  for  the  handicrafts, 
it  was  argued  that  they  distorted  a  man's  body  and 
absorbed  his  mind  and  time,  so  that  he  was  broken  in 
spirit,  ignorant,  and  sordid.  The  same  ideas  as  to  com- 
merce and,  in  part,  as  to  handicrafts,  prevailed  through 
the  Middle  Ages. 

The  classical  civilization  was  built  upon  human  slave 
power.  For  that  reason  it  exhausted  itself  —  consumed 
itself.  It  reached  a  climax  of  organization  and  develop- 
ment, and  then  began  to  waste  capital  and  use  up  its 
materials  and  processes.  It  is,  however,  clear  that  any 
high  civilization  must  be  produced  and  sustained  by  an 
adequate  force.  In  the  case  just  mentioned  it  was  human 
nerve  and  muscle.  Now,  modern  civilization  is  based 
on  capital,  that  is,  on  tools  and  machines,  which  subju- 
gate natural  forces  and  make  them  do  the  drudgery. 
It  is  this  fact  which  has  emancipated  slaves  and  serfs, 
set  the  mass  of  mankind  free  from  the  drudgery  which 
distorts  the  body  and  wears  out  the  mind,  at  the  same 
time  producing  a  high  civilization  and  avoiding  the  wear 
and  tear  on  men. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY  297 

The  "dignity  of  labor"  and  the  "power  of  capital" 
are  therefore  both  products  of  the  same  modem  move- 
ment. They  go  together;  it  is  the  power  of  capital 
which  has  made  labor  cease  to  be  servile;  it  is  the  power 
of  capital  which  has  set  women  free  from  the  drudgery  of 
the  grain-mill  and  the  spinning-room;  it  is  the  power 
of  capital  which  has  enabled  modem  men  to  carry  on 
mining  and  quarrying  without  misery,  although  in  the 
classical  times  those  forms  of  labor  were  so  crushing  that 
only  the  worst  criminals  or  the  lowest  order  of  slaves 
were  condemned  to  them.  Every  high  civilization  is 
unnatural,  inasmuch  as  it  is  the  product  of  art  and  effort. 
It  is,  therefore,  unstable  —  ready  to  fall  again  to  the 
original  level,  if  the  force  and  intelligence  by  which  it 
is  produced  and  maintained  should  fail.  Our  civiliza- 
tion is  supported  by  capital  and  by  modem  science;  if 
either  of  these  fail  —  if  we  exhaust  our  capital,  or  if  our 
science  is  not  adequate  to  the  tasks  which  fall  upon  it, 
our  civilization  will  decline. 

The  dignity  of  capital  is  correlative  with  the  dignity 
of  labor.  The  capitalist  has  not  simply  fallen  under  the 
ban  from  which  the  laborer  has  escaped;  the  modem 
times  have  produced  classes  of  men,  masters  of  industry 
and  accumulators  of  capital,  who  are  among  the  most 
distinct  and  peculiar  products  of  modem  times.  At 
what  other  epoch  in  history  has  any  such  class  of  men 
existed?  There  have,  in  earHer  times,  been  great  mer- 
chants, who  have  shown  that  the  notion  of  a  merchant 
as  a  man  who  cheats  in  weights  and  bets  on  differences, 
is  a  contemptible  and  ignorant  calumny;  the  great  mas- 
ters of  industry,  however,  are  something  entirely  modem, 
and  the  vituperation  of  such  a  class  as  parasites,  plun- 
derers, speculators,  and  monopolists,  is  as  ignorant  and 
inexcusable  as  the  older  misconceptions  of  laborers  which 


^98       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

have  gone  out  of  fashion.  A  great  capitalist  is  no  more 
necessarily  a  plutocrat  than  a  great  general  is  a  tyrant. 

A  plutocrat  is  a  man  who,  having  the  possession  of 
capital,  and  having  the  power  of  it  at  his  disposal,  uses  it, 
not  industrially,  but  politically;  instead  of  employing 
laborers,  he  enlists  lobbyists.  Instead  of  applying  cap- 
ital to  land,  he  operates  upon  the  market  by  legislation, 
by  artificial  monopoly,  by  legislative  privileges;  he 
creates  jobs,  and  erects  combinations,  which  are  half 
political  and  half  industrial;  he  practises  upon  the  indus- 
trial vices,  makes  an  engine  of  venality,  expends  his  inge- 
nuity, not  on  processes  of  production,  but  on  "knowledge 
of  men,"  and  on  the  tactics  of  the  lobby.  The  modern  in- 
dustrial system  gives  him  a  magnificent  field,  one  far  more 
profitable,  very  often,  than  that  of  legitimate  industry. 

I  submit,  then,  that  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance 
that  we  should  recognize  the  truth  about  capital  and 
capitalists,  so  as  to  reject  the  flood  of  nonsense  and  abuse 
which  is  afloat  about  both;  that  we  should  distinguish 
between  the  false  and  the  true,  the  good  and  the  bad, 
and  should  especially  form  a  clear  idea  of  the  social  polit- 
ical enemy  as  distinguished  from  everybody  else.  The 
recent  history  of  every  civilized  state  in  the  world  shows 
the  advance  of  plutocracy,  and  its  injurious  effects  upon 
political  institutions.  The  abuse  and  the  vice,  as  usual, 
lie  close  beside  the  necessary  and  legitimate  institution. 
Combinations  of  capital  are  indispensable,  because  we 
have  purposes  to  accomplish  which  can  be  attained  in 
no  other  way;  monopolies  exist  in  nature,  and,  however 
much  modified  by  art,  never  cease  to  have  their  effect. 
Speculation  is  a  legitimate  function  in  the  organization, 
and  not  an  abuse  or  a  public  wrong.  Trusts,  although 
the  name  is  a  mistake,  are  evidently  increasing  in  num- 
ber all  over  the  world,  and  are  in  great  measure  a  result 


DEMOCRACY  AND  PLUTOCRACY  299 

of  the  modern  means  of  communication,  which  have  made 
it  possible  for  persons  having  a  common  interest,  although 
scattered  over  the  earth,  if  their  number  is  not  too  great, 
to  form  combinations  for  the  exploitation  of  a  natural 
monopoly.  What  is  gained  by  uncritical  denunciation 
of  these  phenomena,  or  by  indiscriminate  confusion  of 
definitions?  The  only  effect  of  such  procedure  will  be 
to  nourish  the  abuses  and  destroy  the  utilities. 

The  first  impulse  is,  when  a  social  or  industrial  phenom- 
enon presents  itself,  which  is  not  considered  good  or 
pleasant,  to  say  that  we  must  pass  a  law  against  it.  If 
plutocracy  is  an  abuse  of  legislation  and  of  political  insti- 
tutions, how  can  legislation  do  away  with  it.?*  The  trouble 
is  that  the  political  institutions  are  not  strong  enough 
to  resist  plutocracy;  how  then  can  they  conquer  plutoc- 
racy.? Democracy  especially  dreads  plutocracy,  and  with 
good  reason. 

There  is  no  form  of  political  power  which  is  so  ill-fitted 
to  cope  with  plutocracy  as  democracy.  Democracy  has 
a  whole  set  of  institutions  which  are  extra-legal,  but  are 
the  most  powerful  elements  in  it;  they  are  the  party 
organization,  the  primary,  the  convention,  etc.  All  this 
apparatus  is  well  adapted  to  the  purposes  of  plutocracy: 
it  has  to  do  with  the  formative  stage  of  political  activity; 
it  is  very  largely  operated  in  secret;  it  has  a  large  but 
undefined  field  of  legitimate,  or  quasi-legitimate,  expend- 
iture, for  which  there  is  no  audit.  As  the  operations  of 
this  apparatus  are  extra-legal  they  are  irresponsible, 
yet  they  reach  out  to,  and  control,  the  public  and  civil 
functions.  Even  on  the  field  of  constitutional  institu- 
tions, plutocracy  always  comes  into  the  contest  with  a 
small  body,  a  strong  organization,  a  powerful  motive,  a 
definite  purpose,  and  a  strict  discipline,  while  on  the 
other  side  is   a  large   and  unorganized  body,  without 


300       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

discipline,  with  its  ideas  undefined,  its  interests  illy 
understood,  with  an  indefinite  good  intention. 

If  legislation  is  applied  to  the  control  of  interests, 
especially  when  the  latter  are  favored  by  the  facts  of  the 
situation,  the  only  effect  is  to  impose  on  the  interests  more 
crafty  and  secret  modes  of  action.  Mr.  Adams  says  that, 
since  the  Interstate  Commerce  Law  was  passed,  the 
methods  of  railroad  men  have  become  more  base  and  more 
secret  than  ever  before.  The  legislator,  in  further  efforts 
to  succeed  in  his  undertaking,  can  only  sacrifice  more  of 
the  open  and  honest  rights  which  are  within  his  reach, 
just  as  the  Russian  Government,  in  trying  to  reach  the 
discontented  elements  in  its  society,  and  crush  them  by 
severity,  only  puts  honest  people  to  unlimited  inconve- 
nience and  loss,  but  does  not  catch  the  Nihilists.  Under 
a  democracy,  when  the  last  comes  to  the  last,  the  contest 
between  numbers  and  wealth  is  nothing  but  a  contest 
between  two  sets  of  lawyers,  one  drawing  Acts  in  behalf 
of  the  state,  and  the  other  devising  means  of  defeating 
those  Acts  in  behalf  of  their  clients.  The  latter  set  is 
far  better  paid  in  consideration,  in  security,  and  in 
money. 

I  therefore  maintain  that  this  is  a  lamentable  contest, 
in  which  all  that  we  hold  dear,  speaking  of  public  inter- 
ests, is  at  stake,  and  that  the  wise  policy  in  regard  to  it 
is  to  minimize  to  the  utmost  the  relations  of  the  state 
to  industry.  As  long  as  there  are  such  relations,  every 
industrial  interest  is  forced  more  or  less  to  employ  plu- 
tocratic methods.  The  corruption  is  greater,  perhaps, 
on  those  who  exercise  them  than  on  the  objects  of  them. 
Laissez-faire^  instead  of  being  what  it  appears  to  be  in 
most  of  the  current  discussions,  cuts  to  the  very  bottom 
of  the  morals,  the  politics,  and  the  political  economy  of 
the  most  important  public  questions  of  our  time. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  MODERN  PROBLEMS 

Renunciation  is  not  agreeable  to  any  body  or  person, 
but  I  have  expressed  the  opinion  that  democracy  ought 
to  renounce;  that  its  prosperity  and  success  depend 
upon  renunciation.  This  needs  some  explanation  and 
illustration. 

In  another  form  the  same  idea  has  often  been  emm- 
ciated.  If  we  want  a  free  government  we  must  be  con- 
tent to  forego  a  great  many  fine  things  which  other  civil 
forms  might  get  for  us.  A  "free  government,"  under 
the  democratic  repubUcan  form,  first  of  all  renounces 
all  the  ceremonial  and  pageantry  of  the  aristocratic  or 
monarchical  form;  that  is  of  Httle  importance,  although 
perhaps  we  assume  too  easily  that  the  poetic  and  imagina- 
tive element  is  absent  from  a  democratic  community. 
But  a  democratic  republic  will  never  be  neat,  trim,  and 
regular  in  its  methods,  or  in  the  external  appearance 
which  it  presents;  it  will  certainly  lack  severity  and 
promptitude  of  operation.  A  great  many  things  are  sure 
to  be  left  at  loose  ends;  in  a  word,  there  is  sure  to  be 
little  discipline.  There  is  a  lounging  air,  a  lack  of  for- 
mality, an  exaggerated  horror  of  red  tape,  a  neglect  of 
regularity. 

Beyond  this,  however,  and  more  important,  is  the  fact 
that  there  are  important  functions  which  older  forms  of 
the  state  have  been  accustomed  to  perform,  which  the 
democratic  republic  cannot  well  perform:  it  cannot 
make  war  without  great  waste  and  expense,  both  of  life 
and  money;   it  cannot  do  any  work  which  requires  high 


302       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  strict  organization,  and  do  it  well  —  if  it  tries  to  do 
work  of  that  kind,  it  does  it  only  at  great  expense,  and 
under  great  waste.  Germany  is  the  best  drilled  and  dis- 
ciplined state  of  modern  times,  while  the  United  States 
is  the  leading  example  of  a  democratic  republic.  The 
judgments  of  these  two  countries  about  each  other,  and 
their  influence  on  each  other,  are  among  the  most  remark- 
able facts  in  modem  life.  The  judgments  of  Germans 
generally  on  the  United  States  are  those  of  men  accus- 
tomed to  an  administrative  system  which  works  accurately 
and  promptly,  also  pedantically  and  cheaply,  on  a  system 
which  is  inaccurate  and  unprompt,  and  is  not  cheap; 
they  are  accustomed  to  respect  state  action,  to  believe 
in  it,  and  to  rely  upon  it;  with  a  population  trained  to 
respond  at  the  tap  of  the  drum,  uneducated  to  individual 
initiative,  and  with  a  bureaucracy  of  long  tradition  and 
intense  training,  the  state  may  present  itself  as  an  entity 
of  a  different  sort,  and  an  agent  of  different  power  from 
the  American  State.  The  question  then  is,  whether  we 
can  draw  any  inferences  as  to  state  functions  from  Ger- 
many, or  whether  we  should  be  willing  to  see  the  Amer- 
ican State  undergo  those  changes  which  it  would  have  to 
undergo  in  order  to  fit  it  to  undertake  all  the  functions 
which  are  undertaken  by  the  German  State. 

This  question  needs  only  to  be  stated  to  answer  itself. 
The  especial  changes  which  the  American  State  would 
have  to  undergo  would  be  to  weaken  democracy  and  to 
strengthen  bureaucracy.  These  are  the  two  changes 
which  would  be  the  most  impossible  of  all  which  could 
be  attempted.  It  is  much  more  probable  that  democ- 
racy will  sweep  away  all  the  bulrushes  in  the  shape  of 
"monarchical  institutions"  which  are  being  built  up 
against  it,  and,  seizing  upon  the  military  organization 
and  the  state  socialistic  institutions  as  at  once  its  prey 


DEMOCRACY  AND  MODERN  PROBLEMS     303 

and  its  instrumentalities,  will  triumph  over  everything 
else,  in  Germany  as  well  as  elsewhere. 

If  we  turn  back,  then,  to  the  free  democratic  state  as 
the  state  of  the  present  and  future,  the  one  which  is  alone 
possible  for  us  and  which  must  go  on  to  meet  and  work 
out  its  destiny,  then  I  think  it  will  appear  that  its  civil 
service  is  its  weakest  point.  The  recent  history  of  the 
French  Republic,  joined  with  our  own,  has  gone  far  to 
show  that  a  republican  system  with  party  government 
is  drawn  toward  the  abuse  of  the  civil  service  by  forces 
which  it  is  folly  to  underestimate.  One  must  shut  one's 
eyes  to  facts  if  one  would  deny  that  the  sentiments  "I 
am  a  Democrat,"  "  this  is  a  Republican  Administration," 
strike  a  responsive  chord  in  the  hearts  of  the  masses, 
where  denunciations  of  the  corruption  of  the  civil  serv- 
ice, or  of  wasteful  expenditures  of  public  money,  fall 
on  dull  ears.  These  watchwords,  however,  are  only  the 
doctrines:  "To  the  victor  belong  the  spoils,"  and  "Woe 
to  the  vanquished,"  in  a  little  less  cynical  and  shocking 
form,  and  they  mean  that,  in  the  modem  democratic 
state,  parties  fight  each  other  for  control  of  the  state, 
which  they  rule,  having  won  it,  like  a  conquered  territory. 
If  this  state,  then,  has  state-socialistic  functions,  it  is 
sure  to  produce  the  worst  exploitation  of  man  by  man 
which  has  ever  existed;  to  live  under  it,  and  not  be  in 
it,  would  be  to  suffer  a  tyranny  such  as  no  one  has 
experienced  yet. 

I  should  not  like  to  be  understood  to  speak  lightly  of 
preaching  as  a  means  of  awakening  the  reason  and  con- 
science of  men  to  convictions  which  are  universally  right 
and  true.  Anything  which  can  be  gained  in  this  direc- 
tion is  sure  to  produce  manifold  fruit  in  politics  and  eco- 
nomic policy;  but  hitherto  we  have  not  done  much 
against  the  abuse  of  the  civil  service  except  by  preach- 


304       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ing.  The  statesman  has  to  accomplish  his  purposes  by 
adopting  measures,  and  by  founding  institutions  which 
can  set  social  forces  in  operation,  or  prevent  their  opera- 
tion. He  must  have  an  adequate  means  or  must  make 
the  best  of  a  case  as  he  finds  it. 

In  the  present  case,  therefore,  I  maintain  that  the  way 
to  minimize  the  dangers  to  democracy,  and  from  it,  is  to 
reduce  to  the  utmost  its  functions,  the  number  of  its 
officials,  the  range  of  its  taxing  power,  the  variety  of  its 
modes  of  impinging  on  the  individual,  the  amount  and 
range  of  its  expenditures,  and,  in  short,  its  total  weight; 
for  among  the  other  vices  and  errors  of  the  prevailing 
tendency,  this  is  one  of  the  worst,  that  we  do  not  see 
that  whatever  extends  the  functions  of  the  state  increases 
its  weight.  Against  this  view  nothing  has  ever  yet  been 
brought  forward  but  the  pure  assumption  which  has  all 
experience  against  it,  that,  if  the  state  should  not  do 
things  they  would  not  be  done  at  all. 

And  there  is  another  course  of  thought  which  seems  to 
me  to  run  in  the  same  direction. 

We  often  boast  that  this  is  an  age  of  deliberation, 
and  it  is,  of  course,  true  that,  as  compared  with  any 
earlier  period,  men  of  the  most  civilized  states  do  act 
by  deliberation  where  formerly  they  acted  by  instinct. 
It  is,  however,  still  true  of  even  the  most  enlightened 
community  which  could  be  found,  that  the  mass  of  the 
people  in  it  live  by  instinct.  The  torments  of  always 
giving  one's  seK  a  reason,  satisfactory  to  reason  and  con- 
science, for  everything  one  does,  are  a  privilege  of  high 
culture.  The  ancient  philosophers  never  got  further 
than  the  question:  what  is  the  highest  good  in  life? 
The  modern  thinking  world  reached  so  high  as  to  spend 
a  year,  perhaps,  in  debating  whether  life  is  worth  living. 
That  was  certainly  a  proud  triumph;  the  mass  of  man- 


DEMOCRACY  AND  MODERN  PROBLEMS     305 

kind,  however,  are  contented  and  eager  to  Kve  without 
deliberating  about  it. 

Now  democracy  calls  for  a  great  amount  of  dehbera- 
tion  and  reflection  from  the  mass  of  mankind;  and  espe- 
cially, if  we  are  determined  not  to  follow  the  policy  of 
letting  things  work  themselves  out,  but  are  determined 
to  exert  ourselves  upon  them,  according  to  ideals  which 
we  have  formed,  then  the  democratic  state  is  destined 
to  make  bigger  and  bigger  demands  upon  the  reflective 
power  of  its  citizens.  K  it  does  so,  it  will  fail  to  get  the 
response  which  it  expects.  Once  more  the  path  of  wis- 
dom seems  to  lie  in  making  the  demands  of  the  state  as 
few  and  simple  as  possible,  and  in  widening  the  scope  of 
the  automatic  organs  of  society  which  are  non-political, 
in  order  to  see  whether  they  will  not  prove  capable,  if 
trusted. 

When  we  are  told  that  the  state  would  do  all  things 
better,  if  we  would  give  it  more  things  to  do,  the  answer 
is  that  there  is  nothing  which  the  state  has  not  tried  to 
do,  and  that  it  has  only  exceptionally  performed  anything 
well,  even  war  or  royal  marriages,  and  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, here  in  the  United  States,  where  the  other  policy 
has  had  more  trial  than  anywhere  else  —  favored,  it  is 
true,  by  circumstances  —  it  has  proved  beneficent  in 
the  extreme.  Therefore,  if,  after  all,  it  is  only  a  ques- 
tion of  whether  to  put  faith  in  the  state  or  to  put  faith 
in  liberty,  an  educated  American  ought  not  to  hesitate 
long  which  to  do. 


SEPARATION  OF  STATE  AND  MAREIIT 

I  CANNOT  find  an  example  of  a  state  which  has  not 
been,  in  a  great  measure,  subject  to  the  power  of  capi- 
tal. It  is  impossible  to  live  and  to  carry  on  any  enter- 
prises of  utility  or  pleasure,  without  capital;  those  who 
denounce  capital  most  earnestly  bear  plainest  testimony 
to  this;  they  are  squirming  about  in  an  effort  to  escape 
from,  or  to  turn  their  backs  on,  this  fact.  Hence  men 
have  always  struggled  to  get  possession  of  this  power. 
Those  who  had  state  power  found  capital  indispensable; 
they  made  alliances  with  those  who  had  it.  The  latter 
made  terms  under  which  they  accomplished  their  own 
ends,  and  satisfied  their  own  tastes.  If  any  examples 
can  be  found  to  the  contrary,  they  are  great  and  power- 
ful despotisms,  which  were  strong  enough  to  disregard 
all  but  a  military  caste,  or  a  priesthood,  but  even  in 
these  cases  the  power  of  capital  made  itseK  felt  indirectly 
through  its  influence  on  the  oligarchy  which  maintained 
the  throne. 

I  cannot  find  a  case  of  any  state  in  which  the  ruling 
element  really  practised  abnegation  of  power,  or  showed  a 
disposition  to  deprive  itself  of  functions.  If  democracy 
contains  any  great  hope  for  mankind,  it  lies  in  the  belief 
that  democracy  is  to  distinguish  itself  from  all  other 
forms  of  the  state  in  this  respect.  Jeffersonian  democ- 
racy, by  its  most  important  dogmas  and  maxims,  seemed 
to  justify  this  hope,  and  if  it  has  won  any  triumphs,  it 
has  won  them  by  this  policy.     It  was  not  afraid  to  be 


SEPARATION  OF  STATE  AND  MARKET      307 

called  non-govemment  or  "atomistic."  The  old  Con- 
gressional Globe  bore  the  motto:  "The  world  is  governed 
too  much."  Jeffersonian  democracy,  however,  in  its 
best  estate,  was  able  only  partly  to  fulfil  its  own  ideal, 
for  it  found  that  a  state  power  which  undertook  to  live 
by  the  principles  of  self-abnegation  could  not  simply 
rest  at  ease  or  be  quietly  neutral.  It  had  to  defend  it- 
self against  the  forces  which  tried  to  direct  it,  and  to 
push  back  against  the  organizations  which  were  trying 
to  drive  it  on  to  the  undertakings  which  it  disavowed. 
In  the  latest  developments  of  democracy,  the  world 
over,  there  is  very  little  of  this  reluctance  to  assume 
functions. 

By  imperium  the  Romans  meant  the  concept  of  miU- 
tary  and  civil  power  combined  in  a  supreme  authority. 
Every  government  aims  to  develop  and  maintain  this 
conception  in  its  chief  organ  as  a  realized  fact,  and  democ- 
racy is  no  exception.  The  "people"  —  that  is  the  rul- 
ing majority  for  the  time  being  —  instead  of  divesting 
itself  of  any  part  of  the  traditional  functions  of  the  civil 
authority,  is  notably  tenacious  of  everything  which  it 
imagines  to  be  "sovereignty";  and  it  resents  any  cur- 
tailment, as  if  such  curtailment  would  contain  an  impu- 
tation upon  the  equality  of  democracy  with  the  other 
-ocracies  which  have  had  the  powers.  So  we  are  gravely 
told  that  "the  state  is  the  depository  of  the  coercive 
power  of  society";  as  if  that  was  an  intelligible  proposi- 
tion, or  one  embodying  a  distinct  notion  applicable  to 
any  question  of  theory  or  any  problem  of  practise.  It  is 
upon  such  turgid  and  empty  dicta  that  all  absolutism  has 
been  built  up  in  the  past;  and  such  are  now  being  fabri- 
cated with  a  zeal  hitherto  unequaled  for  the  purposes  of 
democratic  absolutism.  Indeed,  we  seem  destined  speed- 
ily to  discover  that  democracy,  instead  of  being  a  single 


308       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  homogeneous  system,  is  a  thing  of  such  various  phases 
and  forms  that  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  compare  two 
cases  of  it,  or  that  such  a  definition  can  be  made  that  two 
commentators  can  understand  each  other. 

Democracy  is  atomistic.  It  breaks  the  society  up  into 
individuals  who  are  political  units.  The  peril  of  such  a 
system  is  that  it  is  at  the  mercy  of  any  organization 
formed  inside  of  it  which  gives  coherence  and  order  to 
its  disintegrated  elements.  Such  an  organization  will 
begin  to  move  the  whole.  To  understand  the  significance 
of  this,  let  us  here  bring  another  set  of  observations  into 
the  scope  of  our  study. 

Status  holds  down  individual  energy  and  power.  If 
a  black  man  is  told  that  the  only  status  allowed  by 
social  institutions  to  him  is  that  of  a  slave,  no  black 
man  can  work  out  into  realization  the  powers  which 
he  may  possess.  If  the  status  of  women  is  fiLxed  by 
custom  and  law,  no  woman  can  show  her  power  to 
do  anything  outside  of  the  limits.  The  social  arrange- 
ment which  sets  free  individual  energy  is  Hberty;  for 
under  this  each  one  may  prove  what  he  is  by  what 
he  does,  and  the  society  profits  by  the  expansion  and 
evolution  of  all  the  power  there  is  in  it.  Now  democracy 
and  liberty  are  not  the  same  thing  by  any  means;  but, 
in  the  latest  history,  they  have  been  closely  aUied 
with  each  other,  and  democracy  as  a  political  form  has 
helped  and  been  helped  by  liberty  in  the  social  order. 
The  product  of  liberty  and  democracy  is  individualism. 
Under  it  men  have  been  emancipated  from  tradition, 
authority,  caste,  superstition,  and  to  a  certain  extent  from 
prejudices  and  delusions;  if  we  could  maintain  hberty 
and  democracy  long  enough,  we  might  perhaps  produce 
individualistic  results  so  great  that  men  would  be  eman- 
cipated from  delusions  and  from  phrases. 


SEPARATION  OF  STATE  AND  MARKET      309 

This  movement,  however,  like  every  other,  has  its 
perils  and  abuses.  If  individualism  destroys  institutions, 
and  if  democracy,  with  its  dream  of  equality,  simply 
works  disintegration,  the  society  is  at  the  sport  of  the 
new  elements  which  combine  and  organize  on  new  cen- 
ters, for  actual  disintegration  and  atomization  of  society 
is  impossible. 

What  then  are  the  centers  on  which  the  new  organiza- 
tions form,  and  what  is  the  character  of  the  new  organ- 
izations? In  our  modern  society  they  are  sure  to  be 
interests,  meaning  by  that,  groups  of  persons  united  by 
a  desire  for  the  success  of  the  same  enterprises  and  seek- 
ing pecuniary  gain  from  that  success.  Here  is  where 
the  plutocratic  element  finds  entrance  into  the  demo- 
cratic system,  and  here  Hes  the  weakness  of  democracy, 
in  the  face  of  the  plutocratic  forces  with  which  it  has  to 
cope  in  modern  society. 

What,  in  the  face  of  such  an  antagonism,  is  the  signif- 
icance of  this  new  notion  that  "the  state  is  an  ethical 
person"  —  a  triviality  in  the  guise  of  an  apothegm?  If 
the  state  is  an  ethical  person,  and  is  rent  by  interests 
which  may  be  sordid,  and  are  at  best  commercial,  what 
becomes  of  its  ethical  authority,  and  how  can  its  ethical 
character  abide?  In  order  to  save  its  own  existence  — 
not  its  ethical  character,  but  its  purely  brute  exist- 
ence —  it  has  to  take  sides  with  some  interests  against 
others,  which  is  just  what  all  modern  civilized  states  are 
doing. 

And  yet,  as  I  said  at  the  outset  of  this  essay,  it  has 
seemed  not  impossible  that  democracy  might  contain 
within  itseK  the  form  and  potency  of  better  things.  It 
has  seemed  that  it  might  be  simple-minded  enough  to 
throw  off  all  the  big  dogmas  of  state-olatry,  might  be  so 
open  and  visible,  and  might  feel  itseK  so  well  known  of 


310       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

all  men,  that  it  should  laugh  down  all  inflated  theories 
of  itself;  might  be  so  hard-headed  as  to  treat  all  polit- 
ical mysticism  with  contempt;  might  be  so  practical 
that  it  would  know  better  than  to  try  to  do  too  much, 
or  to  busy  itself  with  schemes  of  universal  happiness. 

The  first  condition  of  its  fulfilling  any  such  hope  is 
that  it  shall  renounce.  It  is  the  strongest  system  that 
has  ever  existed  when  it  is  achieving  peace,  order,  and 
security;  it  is  the  weakest  system  that  ever  existed 
when  it  attempts  to  turn  its  force  to  industrial  or  social 
objects,  and  it  forfeits  strength  in  the  former  field  by  all 
its  attempts  in  the  latter.  The  state  is  the  greatest  mo- 
nopoly of  all;  it  can  brook  no  rival  or  colleague  in  its 
domain;  it  is  necessarily  sole  and  supreme.  If  the  state 
is  purely  a  civil  organization  this  monopoly  character 
of  it  is  beneficial;  if,  however,  the  state  enters  as  an  agent 
into  the  industrial  or  social  relations  of  its  own  subjects, 
it  becomes  the  greatest  and  worst  of  all  monopolies,  the 
one  best  worth  having  under  one's  control,  the  best  prize 
of  base  struggles,  and  the  most  powerful  engine  by  which 
some  men  may  exploit  others. 

The  most  notable  product  of  democracy,  especially 
of  American  democracy,  up  to  this  time,  is  the  maxim 
of  the  separation  of  church  and  state.  There  have  been 
strong  efforts  at  times  in  this  country  to  formulate  a 
maxim  of  the  separation  of  the  state  and  the  market. 
It  is  to  that  policy  that  democracy  ought  to  come,  if  it 
can  command  the  wisdom  and  the  will  to  attain  to  it; 
it  would  thereby  cut  the  ground  from  under  plutocracy. 
Plutocracy,  as  we  have  seen,  consists  in  the  political 
power  of  capital.  If  capital  were  excluded  from  all 
interest  in  state  action,  and  thrown  upon  the  laws  of 
the  market,  there  would  remain  only  that  power  of 
capital  which  is  rooted  in  the  industrial  and  social  order. 


SEPARATION  OF  STATE  AND  MARKET      311 

which  nothing  can  set  aside  or  overcome.  If  there  were 
no  longer  any  legislative  monopoKes  nor  any  legislative 
guarantee  of  natural  monopolies,  the  only  monopolies 
which  would  remain  would  be  such  as  no  one  can 
abolish. 


SOCIAL  WAR  IN  DEMOCRACY 

It  is  one  of  those  popular  assumptions  of  our  time 
which,  although  never  distinctly  formulated,  have  such 
an  important  part  in  all  our  accepted  faiths,  that  social 
forces  change  in  the  progress  of  civilization,  so  that,  for 
example,  slavery  and  feudalism  pass  away  completely. 
The  students  of  social  history,  however,  find  that  social 
forces  are  ever  the  same;  only  the  phenomena  present 
themselves  under  new  combinations.  It  is  when  this 
fact  forces  itself  upon  the  observation  of  men  in  spite  of 
their  pet  dogmas,  that  we  hear  about  the  "labor  prob- 
lem," or  "wage  slavery.'*  Men  toss  and  heave  and 
squirm,  changing  their  position  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration; they  have  always  just  got,  or  are  about  just  to 
get,  the  final  and  completely  satisfactory  solution,  and 
they  find  that  the  hardships  of  life,  the  difficulty  of 
getting  a  living,  the  task  of  rearing  children,  pain,  dis- 
ease, and  death,  remain  about  the  same.  The  new  dis- 
covery, instead  of  annihilating  ills  and  closing  the  account 
of  earthly  hardship,  proves  only  the  point  of  departure 
for  new  ills  unknown  before;  and  the  old  ills  brighten 
as  they  take  their  flight,  for  their  unappreciated  advan- 
tages come  to  light. 

Let  us  notice  how  class  struggles  have  run  through 
modem  history  and  see  what  the  position  of  democracy 
is  in  respect  to  class  struggles  and  social  war. 

The  feudal  system  properly  had  only  two  classes, 
nobles  and  peasants;  kings  were  differentiated  from 
nobles  and  they  made  a  breach  in  the  system.     In  Russia 


SOCIAL  WAR  IN  DEMOCRACY  S13 

and  Poland  these  three  classes  fought  it  out,  and  the 
difference  in  the  results  has  a  value  for  the  student  of 
political  class  struggles  which  no  one  has  yet,  to  my 
knowledge,  developed.  In  Russia  the  crown  won;  the 
nobles  never  became  "nobles'*  in  the  Western  sense; 
the  peasants  were  reduced  to  serfdom  as  mere  pawns  in 
the  game.  They  always  maintained  a  tradition  that  the 
Czar  had  subjected  them  to  servitude  under  the  nobles 
that  the  latter  might  fight  for  the  fatherland  —  a  capital 
instance  of  what  comes  of  sacrificing  private  rights  to 
"the  greater  good  of  the  state."  In  Poland  the  crown 
was  subjugated  to  the  nobles,  and  then  the  latter  devel- 
oped a  tyranny  over  the  peasants  far  worse  than  that 
of  Russia,  and  reduced  their  coimtry  first  to  anarchy  and 
then  to  foreign  conquest. 

In  Western  Europe  another  class  was  differentiated 
from  the  two  classes  of  feudalism  —  the  middle  class, 
the  bourgeoisie  of  the  cities.  This  made  four  classes,  and 
political  history  has  been  moulded  by  their  alliances  and 
conflicts.  The  middle  class  was  at  war  with  feudahsm; 
while  the  lords  were  strong  the  monarchs  and  cities  com- 
bined against  them.  In  Germany  the  crown  could  not 
win  a  real  victory,  while  in  France  and  Spain  it  did  do 
so.  In  England  the  four  classes  came  to  a  compromise 
and  adjustment  under  the  Constitution,  but  their  rub- 
bing against  each  other  has  marked  the  history  of  that 
country  for  five  hundred  years. 

Now,  if  we  have  a  democratic  repubhc,  the  crown  dis- 
appears out  of  it.  If  the  economic  situation  is  that  of 
a  new  country,  with  sparse  population  and  an  abundance' 
of  land,  there  are  no  nobles,  and  in  an  older  country, 
under  the  democratic  republican  form,  there  cease  to  be 
any  nobles.  Titles  are  a  mere  matter  of  courtesy  and 
have  only  social  value.       There  remain  then  only  two 


314       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

classes,  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  peasantry,  and  these 
undergo  very  important  modifications.  The  high  bour- 
geoisie develops  into  a  class  of  wealth  and  luxury,  sup- 
planting, imitating,  reproducing  with  variations,  the  old 
baronage;  it  struggles  to  form  out  of  itself  a  patriciate 
—  a  body  of  selected  families  defined  by  its  own  sympa- 
thies and  voluntary  recognition,  or  a  body  of  locupletes 
or  optimates,  or  a  timocracy  of  those  who  have  enjoyed 
the  honors  of  the  state.  The  process  has  been  repeated 
so  often  in  the  classical  states,  in  the  Italian  republics, 
and  in  the  rich  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages  that  it  ought 
to  be  suflBciently  familiar  to  us.  The  force  at  work  is 
plainly  the  trait  of  human  nature  which  leads  men  to 
gratify  their  vanity,  to  seek  to  excel,  to  try  to  guarantee 
the  future  of  their  children,  and  to  secure  the  fruits  of 
their  own  efforts.  Like  all  other  traits  of  human  nature, 
it  has  its  good  side  and  its  bad  side. 

On  the  other  hand  the  modem  representatives  of  the 
ancient  peasantry  are  very  different  from  their  prede- 
cessors. The  middle  class  is  constantly  fed  from  them 
at  the  bottom.  A  class  of  yeomen  farmers  or  peasant 
proprietors  has  little  in  common  in  its  status,  its  fund 
of  ideas,  or  its  outlook,  with  mediaeval  peasants.  There 
are  no  peasants  in  the  modem  Western  world  with  whom 
the  other  classes  can  play,  or  whom  they  can  afford  to 
disregard. 

In  this  matter  also  the  modem  statesman  is  all  ready 
to  act.  The  chip  which  floated  on  the  current  thought 
that  it  made  the  river  go;  so  statesmen  and  political  phi- 
losophers think  that  they  make  institutions  and  mould 
history.  The  thing  which  makes  and  breaks  institutions 
is  economic  forces,  acting  on  the  interests  of  men,  and, 
through  them,  on  human  nature.  The  statesman  who 
goes  along  with  these  forces,  wins  great  "triumphs";  but 


SOCIAL  WAR  IN  DEMOCRACY  315 

he  is  like  the  chip  on  the  current,  after  all;  the  most 
that  he  does  is  to  show  in  which  direction  it  is  going. 
Now  the  cheapening  of  transportation  between  the 
great  centers  of  population  and  the  great  outlying  masses 
of  unoccupied  land  is  the  greatest  fact  of  our  time,  and  it 
is  the  greatest  economic  and  social  revolution  which  has 
ever  taken  place.  We,  of  this  generation,  are  the  first 
ones  to  see  the  real  effects  of  the  discovery  of  America 
beginning  to  operate  on  the  whole  social  system  of  the 
Old  World.  Through  the  reduction  in  the  rent  of  land 
there,  the  present  forces  are  undermining  and  will  pres- 
ently sweep  away  the  whole  class  system  built  upon  the 
competition  of  a  dense  population  for  a  limited  area  of 
land.  The  fall  in  rent,  the  obliteration  of  social  dis- 
tinctions, the  decline  of  aristocracy,  the  rise  of  democracy, 
the  subdivision  of  great  estates,  the  rise  of  peasant  pro- 
prietors, are  all  consequences  of  the  economic  revolution 
—  consequences  which  no  statesman  or  philosopher  has 
made  or  can  prevent;  but  there  will,  no  doubt,  be  a  great 
number  of  conventions  held  and  innumerable  "resolu- 
tions" will  be  passed  "approving"  of  the  change,  and 
thereby  claiming  to  have  caused  it;  and  the  world  will 
be  enriched  by  a  number  of  great  statesmen  who  will 
be  credited  with  having  made  it  all. 

A  land-owning  peasant  class  and  a  property-owning 
middle  class  do  not  appear  likely  to  go  to  war  with  each 
other.  On  the  contrary,  the  social  combinations  which 
must  arise  under  the  new  order  of  things  are  already  dis- 
cernible: it  is  plainly  the  antagonism  of  those- who-have 
and  those-who-have-not  which  is  to  rise  out  of  the  social 
residuum,  when  kings  and  nobles  and  old-fashioned  peas- 
ants are  gone;  and  the  middle  class,  covering  a  wider 
compass  between  its  extremes,  is  left  alone.  It  is  then 
that  the  test  of  democracy  and  of  the  current  political 


316       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

philosophy  must  come.  With  a  proud  and  powerful 
plutocracy  on  one  side,  and  a  himgry  proletariat  on  the 
other,  can  democracy  find  resources  anywhere  for  con- 
trolling the  elements  of  human  greed  and  passion?  A 
plutocracy  wants  to  obtain  free  swing  for  its  powers 
through  and  over  the  social  organization.  It  wants, 
above  all,  security  and  guarantees  for  what-is,  for 
what-has-been-accomplished  for  capital  and  accumulated 
wealth.  The  proletariat  wants  free  swing  for  the  forces 
of  new  creation,  for  what-is-to-be,for  the  unaccomplished. 
The  former  wants  quiet  enjoyment,  the  latter  wants 
free  chance  for  enterprise. 

It  is  an  easy  thing,  now,  to  get  a  majority  to  vote  that 
the  capital-which-is  belongs  to  the  chances  of  the  new 
effort  for  what-is-to-be,  and  to  resolve  accordingly  that 
those-who-have-not,  belonging  to  the  party  of  enterprise 
and  of  the  future,  ought  to,  and  of  right  must  take  pos- 
session of  the  capital  now  "detained"  by  the  party  of 
the  past  and  of  the  thing-accomplished,  in  order  to  go 
on  with  progress.  We  have  already  had  an  abundance 
of  philosophers  profound  enough  to  prophesy  this  unto 
us;  but  when  these  notions  turn  from  the  precepts  of 
philosophers  into  the  program  of  parties  under  a  democ- 
racy, we  see  that  the  old  social  war  is  not  over.  It  is 
not  settled:  the  old  evils  are  not  abolished;  the  passions 
are  not  stifled  —  they  are  all  here  under  new  forms.  The 
robbery  of  a  merchant  by  a  robber  baron,  the  robbery 
of  an  investor  by  a  railroad  wrecker,  and  the  robbery  of 
a  capitalist  by  a  coUectivist,  are  all  one.  Democracy 
as  a  political  form,  instead  of  settling  anything,  has  set 
them  all  loose;  what,  now,  should  be  and  can  be  its  pol- 
icy toward  them?  If  it  stands  away  from  them,  only 
insisting  on  peace  and  order  and  upon  submission  by 
everybody  to  the  administration  of  rights  according  to 


SOCIAL  WAR  IN  DEMOCRACY  317 

contract,  then  the  landlord  who  finds  that  his  rents  fall,  or 
the  railroad  investor  who  gets  no  dividends,  or  the  pro- 
ducer who  is  dissatisfied  with  the  price  which  his  product 
brings,  will  have  no  recourse  except  each  against  him- 
self. He  will  have  to  learn  more,  and  to  become  wiser. 
Inasmuch  as  this  would  call  reason  and  conscience  into 
play,  there  might  really  be  some  hope  that  we  might  gain 
something  toward  doing  away  with  social  war;  but  that 
democracy  can  solve  the  antagonisms  in  the  newest  order 
of  things,  can  adjust  the  rights  of  the  contending  inter- 
ests by  a  series  of  "ethical"  decisions,  or  that  it  can,  by 
siding  with  one  party,  give  it  a  victory  over  the  other, 
and  thereby  foimd  a  stable  social  order,  it  is  folly  to 
believe. 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS 

[1905] 

What  is  the  chief  economic  problem  of  the  present  time? 
It  would  be  difficult  to  say.  The  question  reminds  me 
of  the  time  when  I  asked  a  class  in  political  economy 
what  is  the  first  great  requirement  which  a  territory  must 
fulfil  in  order  to  become  the  seat  of  a  thriving  colony. 
The  answer  which  I  wanted  was  that  it  must  furnish  an 
article  of  export  in  high  demand  in  the  country  from 
which  the  colonists  are  to  come.  At  last  one  man  replied: 
"Hard  money  and  free  trade."  My  own  view  of  the 
economic  future  is  optimistic  in  the  highest  degree.  I 
believe  that  the  twentieth  century  is  to  see  an  increase  of 
economic  power  far  beyond  anything  which  men  have 
heretofore  experienced;  and  by  "economic  power"  I 
mean  power  over  nature  to  extort  from  it  supplies  for  the 
material  needs  of  men.  The  developments  in  the  appli- 
cation of  electricity  exceed  any  foresight  of  ours;  the 
power  of  falling  water  will  be  applied  to  economize  the 
consumption  of  coal;  it  seems  now  that  the  discovery  of 
the  radio-active  substances  may  prove  to  be  the  greatest 
of  all  discoveries  yet  made  by  man.  These  and  other 
similar  facts  in  the  economic  outlook  promise  great  in- 
crease in  wealth  in  all  departments  of  productive  activ- 
ity. Especially  it  seems  that  the  rewards  of  talent  and 
highly  skilled  effort  will  be  such  as  our  fathers  would 
have  thought  fabulous.  What  is  there  to  frustrate  or 
hinder  the  economic  benefits  which  the  future  seems  to 
offer  .5^ 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS  319 

By  the  side  of  economic  efifort  there  always  go  ques- 
tions of  policy  about  which  the  producers  must  agree  if 
they  are  to  work  with  success.  According  to  present-day 
systems,  the  questions  of  policy  are  put  under  the  control 
of  a  set  of  men  other  than  the  producers —  the  politicians 
and  statesmen.  My  optimism  in  regard  to  the  economic 
outlook  is  equaled  only  by  my  pessimism  about  the 
political  outlook.  I  will  not  venture  to  say  that  the  rela- 
tion between  economics  and  politics  is  the  greatest  problem 
of  the  present  moment,  but  it  is  a  very  great  question, 
and  it  is  to  that  that  I  invite  your  attention. 

Let  us  note  at  once  that  it  is  not  a  new  question;  it 
is  as  old  as  the  simplest  forms  of  political  organization. 
In  the  simplest  agriculture  the  workmen  cannot  manage 
their  own  industry;  they  need  to  be  told  by  their  chiefs 
when  to  sow  and  when  to  harvest.  The  simplest  organi- 
zation is  regulated  by  the  political  heads,  and  by  them 
the  trading  is  done,  or  expeditions  are  organized  to  go 
and  get  supplies.  When  irrigation  is  necessary,  public 
control  becomes  necessary  for  more  important  reasons. 
There  must  be  co-operation  on  a  grand  scale  and  the 
different  steps  must  be  brought  into  due  relation.  Ulti- 
mate success  for  all  depends  on  the  knowledge  and  good 
judgment  with  which  these  questions  of  policy  are  decided. 

In  our  own  society  the  legislator  is  needed  to  give 
to  customs  and  usages  definite  form  and  sanction.  He 
becomes  the  guardian  of  public  or  common  interests, 
especially  in  regard  to  franchises,  privileges,  and  com- 
pulsory powers.  Here  the  delicacy  of  his  function  be- 
comes apparent,  for  he  creates  and  grants  privileges  and 
overrides  private  rights  and  individual  will  in  the  name  of 
a  public  interest.  It  is  necessary  that  he  should  do  so — 
we  do  not  see  how  the  public  necessity  and  convenience 
can  be  served  without  giving  this  power  to  the  legislature. 


320       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

The  natural  man,  when  endowed  with  this  power,  is  very 
apt  to  look  at  it  as  a  New  Haven  councilman  did,  whom 
I  heard  say,  in  the  lobby  of  the  city  hall,  when  a  street 
railroad  question  was  pending:  "It  is  very  queer  that 
we  are  making  this  thing  and  giving  it  away,  and  that 
we  do  not  get  any  of  it."  The  fact  that  the  city  council 
did  not  make  the  franchise  was  only  a  trifling  mistake; 
the  philosophy  of  the  situation,  as  it  appeared  to  an  un- 
educated man,  endowed  with  political  power,  was  the 
important  point. 

It  is  a  universal  rule  that  he  who  needs  protection,  and 
accepts  it,  falls  into  subserviency  under  dominion.  The 
chiefs  who  regulated  industry  under  the  system  which 
I  have  referred  to,  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  owners  of 
the  land.  They  claimed  a  share  in  the  product  and 
exacted  gifts  and  tribute.  In  higher  civilization  it  came 
about  that  kings,  priests,  and  nobles  assumed  the  function 
of  deciding  quarrels  which  arose  between  producers,  or 
in  the  market;  and  they  got  large  fees  for  this  function. 
To  regulate  the  production  became  an  easier  way  to 
get  a  share  in  the  product  than  to  participate  in  such 
production.  The  political  functionaries  got  a  very  large 
share  by  magnifying  their  office. 

In  our  modern  state  the  function  of  organizing  and 
regulating  industry  has  lost  none  of  its  importance.  The 
impersonality  of  modern  industry  has  increased  the  im- 
portance of  all  the  rules  by  which  the  parts  of  the  industrial 
organization  are  held  in  harmonious  relations.  The 
interests  have  been  subdivided,  multiplied,  and  recom- 
bined  into  new  and  intricate  relations,  and  of  course  the 
rights  and  duties  have  followed  parallel  lines  of  refine- 
ment and  complication.  The  dependence  of  industry 
on  political  action  has  become  greater  and  greater.  In- 
dustry looks  to  the  political  organization  for  security. 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS  321 

peace,  and  established  order;  these  constitute  a  status 
which  is  to  industry  the  atmosphere  of  Hfe.  Franchises 
and  privileges  have  not  grown  less  important  but  more 
important.  Our  way  of  developing  and  using  them  is 
by  joint-stock  companies,  which  lessen  the  individual  risk 
and  increase  the  impersonality.  Our  laws  and  institu- 
tions assume  with  great  naivete  that  the  legislators  are 
to  be  disinterested  persons,  no  one  of  whom  will  ever 
make  the  reflection  which  I  quoted  from  the  New  Haven 
councilman.  They  are  assumed  to  act  without  interest 
or  passion  in  the  name  of  pure  justice,  and  the  disburse- 
ment of  franchises  and  privileges  is  supposed  to  be  for  the 
public  interest  only.  It  is,  however,  true  of  every  con- 
stitutional state,  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century, 
that  there  are  two  ways  of  getting  a  share  in  the  product 
of  industry  —  to  help  to  make  it,  and  to  help  to  regulate 
the  making  of  it;  get  at  it  through  economics  or  through 
politics.  Every  great  state  has,  within  a  generation, 
had  a  great  scandal  from  the  action  of  its  pohtical  organs 
on  its  industry;  and  democratic  repubhcs  offer  especial 
opportunities  for  the  legislature  to  levy  tolls  on  industry. 
If  we  confine  our  attention  to  our  own  country  we  know 
that  every  legislature  which  meets  contains  a  set  of  men 
who  are  in  politics  for  what  they  can  make  out  of  it. 
But  every  industry  must  be  carried  on  under  the  con- 
ditions which  are  created  for  it  by  the  laws  of  the  state; 
and  if  it  is  a  large  industry,  or  a  new  one,  it  will  need 
legislation  for  itself  —  it  will  need  compulsory  powers, 
franchises,  etc.  Here  is  where  the  aforesaid  set  of  men 
may  impinge  upon  the  situation.  In  England  the  method 
of  granting  compulsory  powers  is  very  careful  of  all 
vested  interests;  the  consequence  is  that  the  expense  of 
getting  powers  is  so  great  as  to  be  prohibitory  on  aU 
small  enterprises.    This  is  a  standing  diflficulty  on  that 


322       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

side  of  the  subject.  The  more  anxious  and  careful  the 
limitations  by  which  the  grant  of  powers  is  surrounded, 
the  more  expensive  it  must  be  and  the  more  opportunity 
is  offered  for  rivals  to  bar  the  way  of  anything  new. 

In  our  time,  also,  great  care  and  attention  are  given 
to  the  ethical  questions  which  arise  from  the  adjustment 
of  interests,  and  the  just  balancing  of  rights.  Ethical 
questions  always  open  grand  opportunities  for  declama- 
tion and  poetical  generalizations,  as  well  as  for  close 
analysis  and  correct  deduction.  Wagner  ^  says  that 
*'the  social  question  comes  from  a  consciousness  of  a 
contradiction  between  the  economic  development  and 
the  social  ideal  of  liberty  and  equality  which  is  being 
realized  in  political  life."  If  that  is  true,  then  it  is  no 
wonder  that  the  social  question  is  so  hard  to  understand, 
and  so  enduring.  Economic  development  is  sure  to  come 
into  collision  with  all  "ideals,"  because  economic  develop- 
ment is  hard  and  real  and  ideals  are  fantastic  and  unreal. 
The  political  ideals  of  liberty  and  equality  are  amongst 
the  most  fantastic  of  all.  Such  contradictions  between 
ideals  and  realities  surround  all  our  discussions;  trades- 
unionism  presents  many  of  them;  they  threaten  the 
security  and  the  peaceful  development  of  our  economic 
interests.  The  ethical  questions  afford  a  grand  arena 
for  the  well-disposed  bystanders  who  want  to  have  a 
share  in  the  discussion  although  they  have  no  immediate 
interest  in  it;  they  generally  contribute  many  phrases 
and  watchwords  of  vague  sense  and  wide  application, 
if  they  have  any  application  at  all.  Our  politics  are 
full  of  such  watchwords  and  phrases  which  are  of  great 
utility  on  the  stump,  and  many  of  them  are  carried  over 
into  economics.  There  is  no  reason  at  all  to  expect  that 
economic  development  will  ever  come  into  harmony  with 

^  Lehrbuch  der  politischen  Okonomie,  2d  edit.,  p.  36. 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS  323 

the  political  ideals  of  liberty  and  equality.  There  is  no 
sense  at  all  in  the  talk  we  hear  about  "democracy  of 
industry."  Industry  is  carried  on  by  talent,  which  is 
select  and  aristocratic.  It  is  work,  in  regard  to  which 
men  are,  from  the  outfit  which  they  possess  and  the 
conditions  under  which  they  work,  unequal  and  unfree. 
We  have  inherited  from  the  last  two  centuries  a  great 
stock  of  undigested  notions  which  affect  our  minds  when- 
ever social  topics  come  under  discussion.  These  notions 
keep  us  from  seeing  reahties.  We  have  a  school  of 
publicists  whose  discussions  consist  in  a  reiteration  of 
pet  phrases  and  watchwords,  which  never  contain  more 
than  a  small  fraction  of  truth. 

We  must  also  notice  that  the  men  who  engage  in 
economic  enterprises  are  divided  by  their  interests,  and 
the  parties  to  the  several  interests,  if  they  are  defeated 
in  the  economic  struggle,  have  another  chance  in  politics. 
They  assail  the  legislature  with  loud  complaints  of  their 
rivals  and  opponents,  and  demand  that  the  power  of 
the  state  shall  be  used  to  alter  the  conditions  of  industry 
or  to  make  rules  which  will  limit  their  rivals.  The  whole 
modern  industrial  organization  is  full  of  these  conflicts 
of  interests.  The  ethical  elements  in  them  are  never 
simple;  they  generally  depend  at  last  on  the  most  recon- 
dite and  delicate  play  of  economic  forces  and  individual 
talent.  When  the  legislator  tries  to  deal  with  them  so 
as  to  do  "justice,"  he  never  has  the  case  before  him  as 
it  is  before  the  mind  of  a  party  to  the  quarrel.  In  fact 
it  is  not  possible  that  he  ever  could  gain  such  knowledge 
of  it.  Some  one  aspect  of  the  question  fills  his  mind,  and 
it  is  his  prejudices  and  prepossessions  which  determine 
which  aspect  will  win  his  attention;  then  he  enacts 
something  from  the  standpoint  which  he  has  adopted, 
and  does  wrong  to  all  other  interests.     At  any  moment 


324       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  time  the  men-on-the-curbstone  and  the  newspapers 
have  a  set  of  feeHngs  in  their  minds.  Just  now  it  is  a 
notion  that  some  men  are  becoming  too  rich;  that  we 
are  threatened  by  the  tyranny  of  corporations;  and  that 
the  great  masters  of  industry  need  restraint.  This  is 
dignified  with  the  name  of  pubHc  opinion  and  the  will  of 
the  people,  which  it  is  not  only  erroneous  but  wicked  to 
contradict.  This  is  the  tyranny  which  we  need  to  fear: 
the  tyranny  of  a  vague  impression,  held  by  everybody 
and  by  nobody,  impossible  to  formulate  or  argue,  but 
endowed  with  authority.  A  public  man  who  catches 
it  up,  and  pretends  to  satisfy  it,  gets  excessive  power 
without  any  real  responsibility.  All  sorts  of  schemers 
hide  behind  these  floating  notions  and  use  them  for  their 
interests  in  the  battle  with  other  interests,  just  as  the 
walking  delegate  blackmails  a  contractor  and  dupes  the 
loyalty  of  his  followers.  If  we  are  very  angry  and  mean 
to  hit  somebody,  the  next  thing  to  do  is  to  find  out  who 
is  our  enemy. 

The  reason  why  my  political  pessimism  offsets  my  eco- 
nomic optimism  is  that  I  cannot  see  how,  under  existing 
conditions,  industry  can  be  set  free  from  political  control, 
and  I  do  not  see  how  economics  and  politics  can  be 
reconciled  so  that  industry  can  prosper  and  law  can  be 
respected,  both  at  the  same  time. 

All  our  social  order  consists  of  institutions,  customs, 
and  usages  in  which  old  conflicts  of  interest  have  been 
reduced  to  harmony.  Men  have  fought  them  out  and 
reached  adjustments  which  were  equitable.  Our  courts 
of  justice,  our  financial  institutions,  our  methods  of 
trade,  and  our  schools  of  all  grades  are  examples  of  social 
harmonies  which  found  their  form  by  long  conflict,  and 
settled  down  to  smooth  action  by  custom.  The  financial 
institutions  and  the  methods  of  trade  belong  to  the  eco- 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS  325 

nomic  system.  The  system  of  production  is  modem  and 
new.  There  are  still  conflicts  in  it  which  have  not  been 
harmonized.  According  to  modern  usages,  if  any  one  is 
not  suited  in  the  existing  system  he  cries  out  and 
complains.  He  turns  to  the  political  authority  and  wants 
a  law  passed  to  protect  him  from  the  stress  or  strain 
which  he  feels.  The  legislator  responds,  but  he  has  had 
very  poor  success  in  his  attempts  to  adjust  equitably  the 
conflicting  rights  and  interests.  He  has  not  successfully 
imitated  any  of  the  old  social  harmonies,  produced  by 
long  and  patient  struggle  and  endurance. 

If  you  will  recall  the  first  appointment  of  the  federal 
Railroad  Commission  you  will  remember  that  a  decision 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  had  just 
opened  for  us  a  new  page  over  the  top  of  which  was 
written  "Interstate  Commerce."  The  appointment  of 
a  Commission  was  no  settlement  of  anything;  we  have 
been  trying  to  find  out,  ever  since  its  appointment,  what 
the  Commission  is  to  do,  what  it  can  do  and  ought  to 
do.  You  know  what  has  been  written  on  that  page 
headed  "Interstate  Commerce,"  and  we  are  only  at  the 
beginning  of  it  yet.  We  know  that  there  is  no  commerce 
which  is  not,  or  may  not  at  any  moment  become,  inter- 
state commerce.  When  the  first  Commission  was  ap- 
pointed we  scrutinized  the  list  to  see  whether  the  men 
deserved  confidence.  This  winter  we  have  been  told 
that  there  is  only  one  man  on  the  Commission  who  is 
fit  and  competent  to  be  there.^  If  that  is  true,  then  it 
only  illustrates  the  way  in  which  administrative  com- 
missions run  down  when  public  attention  is  diverted 
from  them.  If  a  good  man  is  appointed,  the  railroads 
presently  invite  him  to  come  over  to  them,  and  they  give 
him  two  or  three  times  the  salary.     At  the  same  time 

1  New  York  Times,  January  31,  1905. 


S26       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

that  the  Commission  was  appointed  measures  were  taken 
to  abolish  passes  on  railroads.  Another  evil  was  to  be 
cured  by  law.  On  February  4,  last  past,  the  newspapers 
brought  us  reports  of  a  speech  by  President  Stickney 
of  the  Great  Western  Railroad,  in  which  he  said  that 
everybody  from  the  President  of  the  United  States 
down  to  college  professors  had  gone  on  using  all  the 
passes  they  could  get,  although  it  is  a  criminal  offense 
to  use  one.  In  the  period  which  has  elapsed  since  the 
Commission  was  appointed,  the  Supreme  Court  has 
rendered  a  number  of  decisions  which  seemed  to  have  far- 
reaching  effects  on  transportation  interests,  but  not 
one  of  them  is  known  to  have  really  affected  the  situation 
to  any  important  degree.  No  sooner  is  a  point  settled 
by  legislation  or  a  judicial  decision,  than  the  threatened 
interests  plan  to  secure  themselves  against  its  effects. 
They  have  in  their  service  the  ablest  men  under  the 
largest  pay;  they  find  means  to  attain  their  purposes. 
We  must  expect  that  they  will  do  so.  Their  wishes, 
and  the  means  they  possess  to  satisfy  their  wishes,  are 
a  part  of  the  case  with  which  we  have  to  deal.  The 
Commission,  however,  will  not  be  abolished.  There 
will  be  no  abandonment  of  the  policy  of  regulating  inter- 
state commerce.  Things  do  not  work  that  way.  We 
rarely  reach  a  conviction  that  we  have  made  a  mistake 
and  turn  back  and  give  it  up;  we  try  to  develop  and  com- 
plicate the  contrivance  and  to  put  more  steam  into  it. 
The  political  regulation,  having  failed  to  make  everybody 
happy,  is  to  be  re-enforced  and  the  two  parts  of  the  in- 
dustrial system,  the  economic  and  the  political,  are  to 
enter  into  a  fight  with  each  other. 

It  would  be  very  interesting,  if  it  were  possible,  to  trace 
the  growth  of  a  popular  conviction;  newspapers  and 
magazines  sometimes  try  to  produce  one  and  fail.     Then 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS  827 

again,  they  succeed  in  producing  alarm  and  a  belief  that 
something  is  wrong.  Next  comes  the  popular  conviction 
that  something  must  be  done  —  Daniel  Webster  once 
said  that  the  belief  that  "something  must  be  done"  is 
the  parent  of  very  many  bad  measures.  Next  some 
legislators  take  the  matter  up  in  order  to  win  the  capital 
which  may  be  got  from  early  leadership  of  a  popular 
measure.  What  is  the  real  value  of  such  a  conviction 
that  "something  must  be  done,"  if  it  really  has  been 
produced?  How  many  people  entertain  it?  What  are 
their  grounds  for  it?  These  questions  need  only  be 
asked  in  order  to  show  how  vague  and  untrustworthy 
is  the  alleged  "popular  demand"  as  aground  of  action. 
In  the  last  weeks  the  House  of  Representatives  has 
acted  on  an  assumed  demand  that  a  commission  should 
be  created  which  should  have  power  to  fix  freight  rates, 
and  on  February  3  last  the  House  set  out  to  create  such 
a  power.  How  did  they  do  it?  They  took  up  again  the 
methods  which  they  have  developed  for  doing  what  the 
leaders  of  the  party  in  power  have  decided  shall  be  done 
—  they  held  a  caucus  of  the  ruling  party.  They  decided 
that  there  should  be  no  debate,  thus  refusing  to  hear 
argument  on  the  merits  of  the  proposed  act;  they  cut 
off  the  power  to  amend  it;  they  suppressed  with  scorn 
and  ridicule  such  opposition  as  developed  in  the  caucus. 
They  thus  renounced  all  the  methods  of  legislative 
action  which  we  inherited  with  legislative  institutions 
as  necessary  to  wise  action.  Then  they  adopted  a  rule 
of  order  by  which  to  force  the  bill  through  the  House. 
As  there  was  some  opposition,  the  Speaker  took  the  floor 
and  declared  that  the  House  had  simply  got  to  pass  this 
bill,  and  that  was  all  there  was  to  it.  "There  must  be 
harmony  in  the  Republican  party,  and  the  party  must 
get  together  and  do  something."     Of  course  this  was 


328       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

the  appeal  which,  as  we  all  know,  moves  the  Congress- 
man; an  argument  as  to  economic  loss  or  gain  may  not 
reach  him,  but  party  interest  is  the  supreme  motive. 
The  unanimity  of  the  vote  proves  nothing  as  to  the  con- 
victions of  Congressmen  on  the  measure,  but  only  as  to 
the  excellence  of  the  party  discipline.  When  the  ques- 
tion came  up  before  the  House,  the  Democrats  com- 
plained that  they  were  only  allowed  to  propose  a  single 
substitute,  to  which  Mr.  Dalzell  replied:  "The  generos- 
ity of  the  Republican  party  is  demonstrated  in  its  letting 
the  Democrats  propose  any  substitute  at  all."  ^  That 
is,  of  course,  the  final  point  in  that  theory  of  our  institu- 
tions. The  victorious  party  in  an  election  is  regarded 
as  having  conquered  the  country;  it  takes  the  spoils 
and  gives  or  allows  to  the  minority  as  a  boon,  given  in 
contempt,  what  it  sees  fit. 

There  is  nothing  new  in  all  this.  We  have  seen  it 
grow  up  and  take  shape  within  a  generation.  I  do  not 
now  speak  of  it  because  I  want  to  criticize  the  political 
tendencies  of  today,  but  because  I  want  to  come  to 
this  question:  What  reasonable  ground  is  there  to 
expect  that  out  of  this  method  of  political  action  any 
contribution  to  the  wise  solution  of  economic  questions 
can  come.'*  There  is  no  reason  to  expect  it.  On  the 
contrary,  we  can  only  expect  that  all  political  interference 
will  disturb  and  complicate  economic  problems. 

I  am  a  pessimist  as  to  the  political  future  because  I 
do  not  believe  in  these  methods  of  action  on  questions 
which  affect  complicated  interests  and  rights.  I  have 
said  above  that,  in  the  past,  the  interests  threatened  by 
laws  and  decisions  have  succeeded  in  warding  off  harm. 
I  do  not  doubt  that  they  will  do  it  again,  but  that  means 
that,  in  the  long  run,  they  will  corrupt  the  political  insti- 

^  New  York  Times,  February  7,  1905. 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS  329 

tutions  of  the  democratic  republic.  The  harm  is  not  all, 
therefore,  on  the  side  of  the  economic  interests.  I  see 
no  force  in  modern  society  which  can  cope  with  the 
power  of  capital  handled  by  talent,  and  I  cannot  doubt 
that  the  greatest  force  will  control  the  other  forces. 
Our  political  institutions  are  based  on  the  assumed  power 
of  numbers;  the  popular  orators  are  all  the  time  telling 
us  what  the  "people"  can  do,  when  they  arise  in  their 
might.  The  people  have  made  for  us  what  we  now  have, 
and  in  that  we  can  easily  see  that  great  masses  of  men 
have  no  power  until  they  are  organized  and  led.  They 
take  notions  into  their  heads  which  may  be  good  or  bad, 
but  for  the  regulation  of  industry  we  want  good  notions 
only,  and  good  notions  do  not  come  haphazard  to  great 
crowds  of  men.  They  come  only  to  men  of  talent  as  a 
result  of  study.  However,  as  things  go  now,  the  men 
on  the  side  of  numbers  (democracy)  affect  to  dislike 
talent  and  to  ostracize  it  from  political  influence,  while 
those  on  the  side  of  capital  (plutocracy)  seek  out  talent 
and  enlist  its  services  at  high  wages.  I  cannot  doubt 
what  the  effect  of  this  selection  on  democratic  political 
institutions  will  be.  We  may  already  see  the  corrup- 
tion coming.  We  are,  in  fact,  already  governed  by  in- 
dividuals and  oligarchies;  in  every  state  in  the  Union 
the  haff-dozen  men  can  be  named  who  decide  what  may 
be  done  and  what  may  not  be  done.  The  same  is  true  in 
Washington.  In  other  words,  the  numbers  have  given 
away  their  power  or  have  allowed  it  to  be  taken  from 
them.  That  is  just  what  they  have  always  done  before 
in  every  case  of  democracy  under  the  republican  form. 
We  have  no  democracy  now;  all  the  institutions  are 
broken  down;  they  are  turned  into  oligarchies.  The 
captains  of  industry  and  other  great  leaders  in  industrial 
enterprise  do  not  mind  this,  for  it  gives  them  something 


330       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

which  they  can  deal  with  better.  Some  years  ago  I 
met,  in  Germany,  a  German  who  was  doing  business  in 
Russia.  I  asked  him  if  it  was  not  hard  to  carry  on  busi- 
ness there  under  the  interferences  and  exactions  of  the 
police.  *'0h,  no!"  said  he,  "  it  is  much  better  than  here 
in  Germany.  If  there  is  a  regulation  there  which  bothers 
you,  you  arrange  to  pay  so  much  to  the  police,  and  you 
hear  no  more  of  the  regulation.  Here  in  Germany,  if 
they  put  a  regulation  on  you,  you  have  to  obey  it."  I 
cannot  agree,  however,  with  that  estimate  of  things. 
It  is  short-sighted;  it  is  certain  to  reach  its  own  limit. 
If  we  want  to  go  on  and  prosper  indefinitely,  we  must 
have  energy  and  enterprise  in  economics,  with  few  and 
good  laws,  just  courts,  and  honest  police.  What  we 
want  good  laws  and  good  government  for  is  not  to 
keep  the  masters  of  industry  from  doing  wrong,  but  to 
hold  the  parts  of  the  industrial  organization  in  harmony. 
The  system  of  preventing  a  man  from  doing  wrong  by 
setting  another  to  watch  and  control  him  is  false,  because 
the  whole  community  would  have  to  be  turned,  at  last, 
into  a  great  series  of  watchers  and  watched,  and  wicked- 
ness would  flourish  more  than  it  does  now. 

Let  me  call  your  attention  to  another  fact  which  seems 
to  me  to  mark  the  using  up  of  our  political  institutions. 
If  we  have  a  tribunal  established  to  fix  freight  rates,  we 
may  call  it  a  "court,"  but  it  will  have  to  decide  economic 
questions,  not  judicial  questions.  It  cannot  be  a  court. 
We  shall  call  it  so,  in  order  to  try  to  get  for  it  the  prestige 
which  now  belongs  to  the  most  unspoiled  part  of  our 
political  system.  The  only  similar  institution  known 
to  me  is  the  Irish  court  for  fixing  rents.  The  economic 
parallel  between  rents  in  Europe  and  freight  rates  in 
America  is  very  close  and  real.  Rates  are  prices;  they 
result  from  a  conflict  of  interests;    and  the  conflict  is 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS  881 

intricate  because  many  interests  enter  into  it.  Freight 
rates  are  the  rate  of  return  on  capital  invested  and  work 
done  by  the  railroad  company  and  they  enter  into  the  cost 
of  production  of  the  shipper.  They  also  affect  the  rela- 
tive profits  of  big  shippers  and  little  shippers  and  the 
relative  prosperity  of  towns  and  ports.  Freight  rates 
are,  therefore,  in  our  country,  a  means  of  distributing 
returns  on  industry.  In  our  present  industrial  organiza- 
tion, liberty  is  so  great  that  the  gains  which  are  won 
conform  to  the  degrees  of  talent  which  are  put  into  the 
work.  That  is  the  proper  result  of  liberty;  it  lets  every 
force  produce  its  due  result.  It  is,  therefore,  at  war  with 
equality.  But  our  statesmen  want  to  produce  equality; 
they  dream  of  establishing  conditions  under  which  the 
little  man  shall  stand  equal  with  the  man  of  genius. 
This  they  never  can  do  without  sacrificing  liberty,  and 
all  the  laws  which  are  proposed  aim  to  limit  liberty  by 
taxation,  or  the  authority  of  a  commission,  or  by  special 
duties  arbitrarily  imposed.  The  statesman  must  always, 
in  his  laws,  act  upon  an  assumed  state  of  facts,  and  he 
must  always  prescribe  the  same  line  of  action  for  all 
cases.  His  enactments,  therefore,  act  as  limitations  and 
trammels.  But  all  our  modern  power  and  greatness 
has  been  developed  under  liberty.  It  is  by  setting  free 
all  the  powers  in  the  society  that  all  of  them  have  been 
developed  up  to  the  highest  pitch  and  that  the  economic 
achievements  have  become  so  great.  Then  the  men  of 
ability  who  have  led  in  the  labor  become  great  capitalists 
while  other  men  remain  poor.  But  that  is  offensive  to 
the  taste  for  equality  and  we  hear  endless  lamentations 
over  it.  My  argument  does  not  require  that  I  should 
deny  that  the  masters  of  industry  are  often  masterful, 
arrogant,  and  overbearing;  I  am  told  that  they  are  so 
and  I  am  quite  ready  to  believe  it;   it  belongs  to  their 


332       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

type  of  character  that  they  should  be  so.  It  seems  to 
me,  however,  that  we  cannot  spare  them,  and  we  cannot 
expect  to  make  them  work  in  strait-jackets.  I  think 
that  the  liberty  which  has  allowed  all  our  great  achieve- 
ments is  also  the  best  for  each  of  us  in  his  place  and  way, 
and  I  regard  the  passion  for  equality  as  a  vice  of  our  age. 
In  daily  practise  the  relation  between  economics  and 
politics  does  not  trouble  us  much.  It  is  only  when  the 
statesmen  propose  to  make  a  new  and  great  interference 
with  the  industrial  conditions  that  their  acts  reach  the 
mass  of  us.  In  general  we  enjoy  great  opportunities  of 
industrial  and  professional  activity.  We  can  earn  a 
good  living  and  accumulate  some  savings.  We  have 
very  little  occasion  to  feel,  in  personal  experience,  the 
interference  of  the  political  system.  We  live  in  a  new 
country,  under  easy  conditions,  and  the  mistakes  of  our 
legislators  fall  only  on  the  wide  margin  of  opportunity 
which  is  at  our  disposal  but  not  yet  used.  Taxation 
amongst  us  is  very  unjust,  and  falls  very  unequally  on 
persons  and  property;  but  in  general  our  attitude  in 
regard  to  that  seems  to  be  that  the  "least  said  the  soonest 
mended."  In  the  twentieth  century,  however,  our  pe- 
culiar position  as  a  new  country  will,  in  great  measure, 
pass  away.  The  dogmas  of  political  optimism  which  we 
have  inherited  from  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  cen- 
turies will  be  put  to  new  tests  which  they  cannot  stand, 
when  conditions  are  changed.  It  is  now  evident  that  our 
political  institutions  are  to  be  put  under  great  strain  by 
the  attempt  of  the  United  States  to  act  as  governor, 
patron,  and  receiver  for  the  rest  of  America.  Our 
institutions  cannot  meet  such  a  strain,  for  they  were 
planned  for  a  confederation  of  petty  agricultural  republics. 
They  might  have  sufficed  for  a  republic  of  industrial 
interests  and  unambitious  citizens,   but  they  will  not 


ECONOMICS  AND  POLITICS  333 

suffice  for  an  imperial  world-power.  We  shall  have  to 
choose  between  the  Monroe  Doctrine  and  the  Constitu- 
tion of  1787.  The  political  power  will  be  extended  and 
integrated.  It  will  be  of  more  importance  economically. 
A  clique  which  can  control  the  federal  government  will 
have  a  power  of  self-aggrandizement  which  no  men  have 
ever  had  yet.  It  is  this  outlook  on  the  future  which  is 
opening  before  us  which  made  the  subject  of  economics 
and  politics  seem  to  me  worth  attention  at  this  time. 


THE  POWER  AND  BENEFICENCE 
OF  CAPITAL 


THE  POWER  AND  BENEFICENCE  OF  CAPITAL 

[1899] 

Some  years  ago  I  listened  to  an  address  by  a  social 
agitator  who  said:  *'I  can  get  along  with  anybody  in  my 
audiences  except  these  mean,  stingy,  little  fellows  who 
have  saved  up  a  few  hundred  dollars  in  the  savings  bank 
and  then  have  borrowed  enough  more  to  build  a  little 
house  of  two  tenements,  one  of  which  they  rent.  When 
I  begin  to  talk  about  interest,  and  rent,  and  Henry 
George,  they  get  up  and  go  out  by  the  whole  seat-full  at 
a  time."  The  statement  was  the  most  eloquent  recogni- 
tion I  ever  heard  of  the  power  and  beneficence  of  capital. 
It  has  always  remained  in  my  memory  as  a  confession 
by  an  opponent  of  the  education  effected  by  savings  and 
of  the  benefit  conferred  on  society  by  savings  banks. 
I  make  it  the  text  for  the  remarks  which  I  will  address 
to  you  on  this  occasion. 

We  hear  a  great  deal  in  these  days  about  social  discon- 
tent. It  seems  to  be  taken  for  granted  that  discontent 
is  a  sufficient  proof  of  grievance  which  third  parties  are 
bound  to  take  cognizance  of  and  redress.  It  might  be 
argued  with  far  greater  plausibility  that  discontent  is  a 
proof  of  prosperity.  If  you  look  around  the  world  today 
you  will  find  that  discontent  is  greatest  where  the  chances 
are  greatest.  A  man  who  has  never  had  anything  or  a 
chance  to  get  anything  is  not  discontented;  he  rests 
contented  with  what  he  has  always  been  accustomed  to. 
Let  him  enjoy  an  opportunity  and  win  something  and  the 
effect  will  be  to  excite  his  wish  to  win  more.     There  is 


338       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

more  discontent  in  one  house  in  the  United  States  or  in 
England  than  in  the  whole  Russian  Empire.  Discontent 
exists,  then,  where  there  are  opportunities,  and  it  is  a 
stimulus  to  take  advantage  of  opportunities.  In  that 
case  it  is  an  agency  which  produces  achievement  and 
drives  on  what  we  call  progress.  In  other  cases  discon- 
tent is  a  result  of  conviction  that  opportimities  have 
been  lost  and  that  it  is  too  late  to  recover  them.  Then 
again,  discontent  is  the  twin  sister  of  envy,  when  it  is 
seen  that  others  have  profited  better  by  opportunities. 
In  no  case  does  discontent,  as  a  naked  fact,  prove  any- 
thing, and  when  the  details  are  known  it  never  is  proof  of 
a  grievance. 

Our  social  philosophers,  however,  as  I  have  said, 
assume  that  discontent  is  a  legitimate  and  imperative 
demand  for  a  remedy.  They  treat  it  as  a  social  phe- 
nomenon, and  the  remedies  which  they  propose  are 
societal,  that  is,  they  are  in  the  nature  of  devices  and 
regulations  which  call  for  the  action  of  the  agencies  of 
society.  So  far  as  these  social  philosophers  get  their 
way,  we  find  that  it  is  legislation  which  is  set  at  work, 
and  this  legislation  imposes  tasks  on  functionaries  and 
institutions.  The  net  final  and  certain  result  is  new 
burdens  on  taxpayers.  Discontent  is  not  diminished; 
it  is  generally  increased.  If  you  get  a  report  of  the 
operation  of  any  of  these  devices  which  have  already  been 
adopted  you  will  find  it  full  of  criticism,  perhaps  of  deri- 
sion, of  the  device.  It  is  pointed  out  how  crude  the 
notion  was;  how  ignorant  of  the  conditions;  how  irrele- 
vant to  the  purpose  in  view. 

I  will  not  now,  however,  dwell  upon  this  aspect  of 
social  measures  to  cure  discontent;  what  I  am  now 
more  interested  in  is  the  education  exerted  by  all  this 
philosophy  and  all  these  devices  on  the  people  on  whom 


THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL  SS9 

they  are  brought  to  bear.  The  social  philosophy  which 
has  been  in  fashion  for  a  century  past  has  educated  us  in 
the  notion  that  we  ought  all  to  be  "happy"  (as  the  phrase 
goes)  on  this  earth,  and  that,  if  we  are  not  so,  we  ought  to 
cry  out,  and  then  that  somebody  is  bound  to  come  and 
take  care  of  us.  Liberty,  equality,  and  happiness  have 
been  declared  to  be  natural  rights,  which  is  interpreted 
to  mean  that  they  were  laid  in  our  cradles  as  our  endow- 
ment for  the  battle  of  life.  Every  human  being,  on  this 
theory,  comes  into  the  world  with  an  outfit  and  a  patri- 
mony of  metaphysical,  if  not  of  physical,  goods.  This 
doctrine  is,  of  course,  very  popular  and  the  men  who 
preach  it  are  sure  of  popular  applause  and  political  power. 
Tell  a  man  that  just  because  he  has  been  bom,  he  ought 
to  have  and  enjoy  all  the  highest  acquisitions  of  civiliza- 
tion without  labor,  self-denial,  or  study,  and  that  he  is 
a  victim  of  injustice  if  he  does  not  possess  all  those 
good  things,  and  he  will  be  sure  to  be  delighted.  Some  of 
these  grand  old  eighteenth-century  dogmas  which  lie  on 
the  borderline  between  politics  and  social  philosophy 
have  been  found  very  much  in  the  way  in  our  own  his- 
tory of  the  last  twelve  months.  They  have  been  pushed 
aside  as  out  of  date.  Perhaps  we  may  get  an  incidental 
advantage  from  recent  history  if  we  can  throw  them  all 
overboard  together,  but  it  is  more  likely  that  the  bun- 
combe element  in  them  has  too  much  value  for  political 
purposes  to  be  sacrificed,  and  so  we  shall  see  that  retained. 
We  may  be  very  sure  that  all  these  theories  of  world 
beatification  can  produce  nothing  but  disillusion  and 
disappointment  for  those  who  put  faith  in  them,  and 
disintegration  for  the  society  in  which  they  are  current. 
The  human  race  never  received  any  gratuitous  outfit  of 
any  kind  whatever;  no  heathen  myth  ever  was  more 
silly  and   empty  than   such   a  notion;   talk  about  the 


340       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

"boon  of  nature"  and  the  "banquet  of  life"  and  the 
"free  gift  of  land"  is  more  idle  than  fairy  tales.  We  can 
speak  nowadays  with  some  positive  knowledge  about  the 
primitive  condition  of  the  human  race  on  earth,  assum- 
ing now  that  the  facts  about  the  primitive  condition 
of  man  have  some  bearing  on  our  modern  social  contro- 
versies. We  know  that  the  human  animal  is,  by  nature, 
more  helpless  in  the  face  of  nature  than  many  other  ani- 
mals, and  that  nature  did  not  start  the  human  animal  oflF 
with  any  other  rights  than  those  of  all  the  other  animals. 
The  human  race  came  upon  this  globe  with  no  outfit  at 
all.  The  mere  task  of  existing  and  continuing  here  was 
so  great  that  the  human  race  was  taxed  to  the  utmost  to 
meet  it.  The  obvious  proof  of  that  is  that  large  groups 
of  men  have,  in  innumerable  instances,  utterly  perished 
from  the  face  of  the  earth.  These  are  facts  of  knowl- 
edge at  the  present  time  and  so  far  as  I  know  they  are  not 
disputed  by  anybody. 

I  have  already  intimated  that  these  facts  about  the 
primitive  order  of  things  have  very  little  value  for  modem 
social  controversies.  Their  value  lies  in  quite  another 
direction.  If  we  men  have,  to  any  extent,  conquered 
the  task  of  existence,  if  we  have  risen  to  some  command 
over  nature,  and  if  we  have  created  a  domain  of  rights 
between  ourselves,  it  is  by  civilization  that  we  have  done 
it.  The  good  things  were  not  given  to  us  gratuitously 
at  the  outset;  they  are  the  product  of  the  toil  and 
suffering  of  mankind.  They  belong  at  the  end,  not  at 
the  beginning.  The  people  who  are  nowadays  examin- 
ing the  product  and  passing  judgment  on  it  are  only 
betraying  their  own  ignorance  and  folly.  They  are  quite 
dissatisfied  with  it;  they  write  books,  hold  conventions, 
and  pass  resolutions  about  how  we  ought  to  change  it, 
and  they  draft  ideas  about  how  they  would  like  to  recon- 


THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL  841 

struct  it.  If  we  arrive  at  some  correct  idea  of  what 
society  is  and  what  civilization  is,  we  shall  regard  all  such 
speculations  as  more  absurd  than  witchcraft  or  astrology. 
We  are  the  children  of  the  society  in  which  we  were  bom. 
It  makes  us.  We  are  products  of  the  civilization  of  our 
generation.  Only  a  handful  of  men  can  react  upon  the 
society  and  the  age  in  which  they  live  so  as  to  modify  it 
at  all.  They  are  the  very  Slite  of  the  human  race,  and 
after  all  what  they  can  do  is  only  infinitesimal.  Civiliza- 
tion means  the  art  of  living  on  this  earth.  All  men  have 
always  been  trying  to  learn  it,  and  all  that  now  is  in  the 
order  of  society  is  the  product  of  this  struggle  of  ages. 
It  pours  along  in  a  mighty  flood  which  bears  us  all  with 
it;  in  it  are  all  the  efforts,  passions,  interests,  and  strife 
of  men.  It  is  the  play  of  these  upon  each  other  which 
produces  the  heaving  and  swaying  of  the  flood  and  de- 
termines its  vast  modifications  of  direction.  If  you  come 
to  a  faint  understanding  of  this,  the  man  with  a  scheme 
in  his  pocket  for  the  "reorganization  of  society"  is  made 
to  appear  very  ridiculous. 

The  instrumentality  by  which,  from  the  beginning, 
man  has  won  and  held  every  step  of  this  development  of 
civilization,  is  capital.  Some  people  talk  about  ideas 
and  philosophy  which,  they  think,  have  ruled  the  affairs 
of  men.  The  ideas  are  only  secondary.  The  philosophy, 
when  it  has  acted  as  a  cause,  has  taken  the  form  of  dogma, 
and  has  done  harm  as  often  as  good.  We  may  take 
illustrations  in  proof  from  the  present  time.  There  is  a 
dogma  afloat  that  labor  alone  makes  wealth,  so  that  the 
whole  product  should  belong  of  right  to  the  laborer. 
Another  dogma  is  that  limiting  the  hours  of  labor  would 
make  work  for  more  laborers,  and  another  is  that  any 
wealth  which  one  man  accumulates  is  so  much  taken 
from  some  or  all  other  men.     Another  is  that  all  increase 


342       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

in  the  value  of  land  or  franchises  is  due  to  the  social 
organization  and  activity,  and,  therefore,  should  not  go 
to  the  holders.  These  dogmas  are  all  false,  but  they  are 
of  great  scope.  They  are  great  fighting  dogmas  because 
they  serve  interests.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  they  win 
acceptance,  because  the  great  reason  for  inventing  dog- 
mas, principles,  and  phrases  is  to  use  them  in  controversy. 
These  dogmas,  therefore,  which  I  have  mentioned  will, 
if  adopted  as  the  norm  of  legislation,  produce  destructive 
convulsions  in  society  and  nothing  else.  In  the  mean- 
time the  social  development  is  going  on  by  slow  accretions 
which  nobody  notices;  they  are  won  by  adjustments 
between  the  interests  of  men  who  meet  new  problems 
every  day  and  solve  them  as  well  as  they  can  under  the 
conditions  prevailing.  These  adjustments  are  all  made 
by  means  of  capital,  because  the  interests  are  all  matters 
of  capital,  and  all  the  readjustments  are  secured  by 
capital.  In  their  turn  they  favor  the  creation  of  capital, 
because  the  readjustments  which  serve  interests  always 
mean  attempts  to  win  a  given  result  by  a  smaller  expend- 
iture of  labor  and  capital. 

Others  think  that  "organization"  is  the  great  force 
which  has  made  civilization;  they  think  that  organiza- 
tion is  arbitrary  and  subject  to  manipulation,  and  conse- 
quently it  is  upon  the  organization  that  they  bring  their 
efforts  to  bear.  Organization  has,  of  course,  been  a 
commanding  phenomenon  in  the  development  of  civiliza- 
tion. A  student  of  that  development  is  not  likely  to 
disregard  organization.  For  myself,  I  am  convinced  that 
much  is  yet  to  be  gained  by  better  appreciation  of  the 
element  of  organization.  But  organization  is  only  the 
mode  under  which  the  work  of  life  goes  on.  It  is  not  a 
force — it  never  can  force  anything.  It  has  to  do  with 
the   smoothness   and   harmony   of   the   operations.     In 


THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL  343 

human  society,  in  its  lower  forms,  organization  has  always 
produced  itself  spontaneously  and  automatically  and  has, 
therefore,  just  suited  itself  to  the  case.  It  has  sometimes 
become  traditional  and  dogmatic,  and  for  that  reason  it 
has  become  a  hindrance,  preventing  necessary  readjust- 
ments. Then  societal  convulsions  and  revolutions  have 
occurred.  In  civilized  society  organization  is  equally 
spontaneous  and  automatic.  In  the  civil  organization 
some  element  of  arbitrary  action  has  become  possible, 
and  this  it  is  apparently  which  has  caused  the  notion  that 
societal  organization  is  a  thing  subject  to  conventions 
and  resolutions.  In  regard  to  the  civil  organization, 
however,  the  chance  of  some  arbitrary  action  has  only 
introduced  an  element  of  risk  and  peril,  just  as  an  intelli- 
gent being  runs  the  risk  of  going  wrong  where  an  instinc- 
tive being  never  has  to  face  any  question  at  all.  All 
attempts  so  far  made  to  extend  the  domain  of  policy 
in  social  matters  have  resulted  only  in  doubt  and  in 
warnings  of  danger;  the  proposition  to  adopt  a  policy 
of  organization  can  never  do  anything  but  disturb  the 
harmony  of  the  societal  system  which  is  its  greatest 
advantage.  They  never  will  really  change  the  societal 
organization,  for  it  is  already  controlled  by  the  mighty 
forces  of  interest.  For  instance:  if  so-called  trusts  are 
now  a  real  step  in  the  evolution  of  the  industrial  organ- 
ization, a  legislative  policy  of  sweeping  and  destructive 
opposition  to  them  is  vain,  and  after  producing  great  con- 
fusion and  animosity  and  loss,  will  have  to  be  abandoned. 
The  case  of  department  stores  is  similar  and  more  simple 
and  obvious.  If  the  wages  organization  is  suited  to  the 
present  conditions  of  industry,  it  is  quite  useless  to  try 
to  invent  any  organization  of  labor  to  supersede  it.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  may,  from  this  case,  see  how  the 
organization  changes,  for  if  the  interests  of  men  are  not 


344       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

served  by  the  wages  organization  they  will  seek  to  modify 
it  in  the  detail  in  which  it  is  unsatisfactory,  whence  it 
may  follow  in  time  that  some  different  organization 
will  be  gradually  evolved  to  take  its  place.  Harmony 
of  action,  with  the  highest  possible  satisfaction  of  interests, 
is  the  point  of  equilibrium  towards  which  the  organization 
is  always  tending.  Those  men  nowadays  who  can  foresee 
the  next  steps  to  be  taken  to  advance  on  this  line  are  the 
great  generals  of  the  modern  industrial  army.  If  the 
organization  is  bad,  it  can  waste  and  impede  the  effort; 
if  it  is  good,  it  can  allow  the  effort  to  reach  its  maximum 
result  under  the  conditions.  That  is  the  sum  of  all  that 
can  be  said  about  organization. 

We  must  return  then  to  the  proposition  already  made. 
If  men  are  not  now  in  beastliness  and  utter  want,  it  is 
by  virtue  of  labor  and  self-denial.  Labor  and  self-denial 
have  been  embodied  in  useful  things,  that  is,  capital. 
The  things  won  on  the  one  stage  have  become  new  instru- 
mentalities on  the  next  stage.  It  is  not  strange  that  the 
growth  has  been  so  slow,  especially  in  its  earlier  stages, 
when  we  see  how  hard  the  struggle  has  been,  and  how 
much  it  has  been  at  war  with  human  nature.  It  is  only 
when  we  have  gained  some  conception  of  the  painful  and 
toilsome  effort  by  which  every  step  has  been  won,  that 
we  can  estimate  at  its  full  value  the  civilization  which 
we  have  inherited;  but  then,  too,  we  are  driven  to  believe 
that  we  never  can  gain  anything  more  except  by  the  same 
means.  The  great  reason  why  the  advance  of  civiliza- 
tion has  been  so  slow  is  that  it  has  never  gone  forward 
steadily.  Its  progress  has  been  broken  up.  It  has  been 
broken  up  by  ignorance  and  superstition,  which  is,  of 
course,  simply  saying  that  it  never  could  go  on  faster 
than  men's  knowledge  at  that  stage  could  carry  it.  It  has 
also  been  broken  up  by  passion,  and  by  strife  over  ques- 


THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL  S45 

tions  of  policy.  All  this  remains  just  the  same  now  as  it 
ever  was.  Discord,  strife,  and  war  break  up  the  orderly 
and  co-operative  effort  to  reach  a  higher  satisfaction  of  our 
interests  —  which  seems  to  be  alone  worthy  of  intelligent 
and  civilized  men.  The  ignorance,  folly,  and  strife  destroy 
capital;  the  orderly  and  well-organized  efforts  to  satisfy, 
create  and  preserve  capital.  The  presence  of  capital 
does  not  insure  the  extension  of  civihzation,  for  the 
capital  may  be  wasted  by  error  or  it  may  be  employed 
entirely  in  an  increase  of  population;  but  an  extension 
of  civilization  without  an  increase  of  effective  capital  or 
a  diminution  of  members  is  impossible. 

It  may  seem  to  you  that  the  course  of  thought  on  which 
I  have  so  far  led  you  was  somewhat  too  academical  or 
philosophical  for  this  occasion,  but  I  am  now  ready  to 
return  to  the  orator  and  the  savings  bank  depositors 
whom  I  mentioned  at  the  outset.  The  facts  and  ideas 
which  I  have  presented  to  you  show  that  the  savings 
bank  depositor  is  a  hero  of  civilization,  for  he  is  helping 
in  the  accumulation  of  that  capital  which  is  the  indispen- 
sable prerequisite  of  all  we  care  for  and  all  we  want  to  do 
here  on  earth.  The  more  convinced  you  are  that  the 
notions  and  devices  which  are  offered  to  us  by  social 
speculators  as  the  means  of  social  progress  are  all  vain, 
and  that  the  whole  effort  to  find  some  means  of  easily 
making  everybody  happy  is  a  waste  of  time,  the  more  you 
will  be  thrown  back  on  the  industrial  virtues  as  the  only 
moral  resources  at  our  command  which  enable  us  men  to 
fight  the  battle  of  life  with  success.  The  industrial  virtues 
are  industry,  frugality,  prudence,  and  temperance.  We 
cannot,  however,  deny  the  presence  of  another  element 
which  is  powerful  in  determining  our  success — the  element 
of  good  or  ill  fortune.  It  is  true  that  men  have  fortune, 
or  destiny,  or  Divine  Providence  at  hand  as  a  convenient 


346       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

agency  on  which  to  throw  the  blame  for  the  consequences 
of  their  own  acts,  especially  for  those  acts  which  are 
violations  of  the  industrial  virtues;  but  when  all  is  said 
in  correction  of  the  popular  abuse  of  luck,  it  is  useless  to 
deny  that  good  or  ill  fortune  may  make  or  mar  the  success 
of  men  in  spite  of  their  most  careful  endeavors.  This 
element,  however,  is  irrational;  there  is  an  element  in 
it  of  which  we  are  ignorant.  Therefore,  it  is  beyond  our 
command  and  we  have  to  submit  to  it  and  make  the  best 
of  it.  Our  only  means  of  dealing  with  it,  where  we  can 
do  so,  is  to  meet  it  co-operatively  as  we  do  in  insurance. 
Returning,  then,  to  the  industrial  virtues,  I  repeat  that 
they  are  our  only  moral  resource  for  winning  success  in 
the  battle  of  life.  The  greater  the  disadvantages  under 
which  one  starts  in  life,  the  higher  the  value  of  these 
virtues  for  winning  the  first  foothold  and  making  the 
first  step  to  something  better.  There  is  reason  for  pro- 
found faith  in  any  device  which  is  proposed  for  societal 
improvement  if,  upon  strict  analysis,  we  can  find  that  it 
will  touch  the  springs  of  industrial  virtue  and  raise  the 
industrial  virtues  to  higher  activity.  There  is  no  ground 
for  faith  in  any  device  which  does  not  stimulate  those 
virtues.  It  is  not  necessary  to  add  that  if  devices  which 
are  proposed  are  found  upon  examination  to  stimulate 
envy  or  vanity,  or  fondness  for  talk,  or  a  desire  to  live 
by  one's  wits,  they  are  only  mischievous.  It  is  not  easy 
for  us  to  form  estimates  of  each  other's  virtues,  especially 
when  we  look  at  each  other  in  classes,  but  the  savings 
bank  depositor,  as  a  type,  gives  the  surest  and  most  con- 
crete evidence  of  the  industrial  virtues.  He  must  be 
industrious,  frugal,  prudent,  and  temperate.  He  is  a 
capitalist;  he  is  getting  in  hand  that  power  which,  as  I 
have  said,  has  created  and  now  upholds  all  civilization. 
He  is  winning  a  share  in  its  power.     He  is  getting  the 


THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL  347 

upper  hand  of  the  tasks  of  life.  He  is  fortifying  himself 
against  bad  luck  and  disaster.  He  is  developing  his  own 
character  by  the  self-denial  and  the  persistent  pursuit  of 
a  selected  purpose  which  he  is  obliged  to  practise.  You 
find  nowhere  else  such  guarantees  of  sound  judgment, 
sober  reason,  and  moderate  temper  as  are  offered  by  the 
fact  of  saving.  There  is  no  other  guarantee  of  good  citi- 
zenship which  is  so  simple  and  positive,  and  at  the  same 
time  so  far-reaching,  as  the  possession  of  savings.  The 
seats-full  of  savings  bank  depositors  who  went  out  of  the 
lecture  proved  it. 

The  old  classical  saying  was:  he  who  has  wife  and 
children  has  given  pledges  to  fortune.  He  has  opened 
avenues  by  which  misfortune  can  reach  him  through  other 
hves.  But  capital  is  the  chief  means  of  protecting  those 
dependents;  it  gives  education  to  the  children  and  puts 
them  on  a  higher  plane  for  the  battle  of  life  than  that  on 
which  their  parents  stood.  It  is  right  to  conceive  of  the 
human  race  on  this  earth  as  engaged  in  an  endless  battle 
with  the  conditions  of  existence,  striving  so  to  modify 
them  that  men  may  get  more  out  of  their  lives  in  the  way 
of  satisfaction  of  the  possibilities  of  human  nature.  For 
a  century  past  the  current  popular  notion  has  been  that 
the  way  to  win  the  battle  is  to  "raise  the  lower  classes." 
The  notion  seems  to  be  that  the  vicious  criminal  and 
poverty-stricken  classes  are  a  certain  number  of  human 
beings  who  are  miserable  or  harmful.  It  is  thought  that, 
if  this  number  can  be  cured  of  social  disease,  all  will  be 
well.  This  notion  is  based  an  childish  misconceptions  as 
to  what  society  is  and  as  to  the  nature  of  social  disease. 
Projects  to  abolish  poverty  are  worthy  of  an  age  which 
has  undertaken  to  discuss  the  abolition  of  disease.  Why 
not  abolish  death  and  be  as  gods  once  for  all?  WTiy  not 
resolve  that  everybody  shall  be  good  and  happy  .f*     WThy 


348       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

not  vote  that  everybody  shall  have  whatever  he  wants? 
Why  trifle  with  details?  If  these  agencies  can  get  us  any- 
thing, they  can  just  as  well  get  us  everything.  The 
trouble  with  creation  out  of  nothing  is  not  to  make  a 
universe;  it  is  to  make  an  atom  of  star-dust.  If,  then, 
we  turn  away  from  all  these  notions  and  devices  and  try 
to  understand  the  case  of  man  on  earth  just  as  it  is,  we 
find  that  our  task  always  is  to  do  the  best  we  can  under 
the  conditions  in  which  we  are  and  with  the  means  which 
we  possess.  Then  it  appears  that  capital  is  the  means 
with  which  we  do  it  and  that  it  is  by  capital  spent  on  the 
education  and  training  of  the  rising  generation  that  we 
keep  up  that  advancing  fight  against  the  ills  of  life  to 
which  I  have  referred.  I  do  not  suppose  that  the  savings 
bank  depositors  who  left  the  lecture  knew  much  about 
all  this,  but  that  class  of  men  have  a  way  of  their  own  of 
getting  at  things.  The  possession  of  capital  gives  an 
acuteness  of  insight  into  whatever  affects  capital;  men 
who  have  tried  saving  have  not  much  patience  with 
rhetoric  and  dogmatism  about  how  to  get  on  in  life,  and 
we  know  how  acute  they  become  in  perceiving  that  the 
upshot  of  the  schemes  is  to  make  them  share  their  savings 
with  those  who  have  never  done  any  saving.  I  suppose 
that  when  the  savings  bank  depositors  got  up  and  left 
the  lecture,  it  was  an  expression  of  this  impatience. 

I  never  saw  a  poem  about  the  savings  bank  depositor. 
Poems  are  all  written  about  heroes,  kings,  soldiers,  and 
lovers;  there  are  plenty  of  poems  about  glory,  and  love, 
and  ambition,  and  even  about  poverty,  but  saving  is 
passed  by  as  sordid  and  mean  —  utterly  unpoetical.  It 
has  always  been  thought  noble  to  spend  and  mean  to  save, 
which  only  shows  how  far  we  are  yet,  with  all  our  boast- 
ing, preaching,  and  discussing,  from  sound  standards  of 
judgment  about  the  operations  of  society.     It  has,  how- 


THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL  S49 

ever,  always  been  recognized  that,  among  subjects  of 
dramatic  interest  and  power,  the  hero  struggHng  against 
adversity  with  fortitude  and  perseverance  is  one  of  the 
grandest.  In  our  modem  commercial  and  unadventurous 
life,  you  will  hardly  find  nobler  examples  of  it  than  those 
seats-full  of  people  who,  after  saving  a  Uttle  to  make  a 
beginning,  had  built  two  tenement  cottages  the  mort- 
gages on  which  they  were  trying  to  pay  oflF. 

Some  people  will  answer  that  they  see  the  utility  and 
even  the  moral  grandeur  of  savings  by  poor  people,  but 
that  they  dread  and  disapprove  of  accumulation.  If  the 
savings  bank  depositor  saves  enough  to  pass  on  up  into 
the  class  of  large  and  independent  investors  and  finally  to 
enter  the  class  technically  known  as  "capitalists,"  om* 
social  philosophers  withdraw  their  sympathy  and  respect 
from  him  and  denounce  him  because  he  is  rich.  Savings 
banks  would  then  seem  to  be  useful  institutions  because 
they  are  vicious  only  up  to  a  certain  point.  Savings 
banks  are  the  most  efficient  institutions  for  aggregating 
capital  which  we  possess.  That  is  the  most  useful  function 
which  they  perform,  when  we  regard  them  from  the  stand- 
point of  society,  not  of  the  individual  depositor.  In  fact, 
we  must  beheve  that,  if  the  motives  of  thrift  could  be 
made  to  actuate  the  population  far  more  widely  than  they 
now  do,  resources  of  capital  could  be  found  in  the  in- 
creased savings  of  the  mass  of  the  population  of  which  we 
have  at  present  but  little  idea.  Savings  are  like  taxes: 
if  you  want  big  results  you  must  look  to  the  aggregation 
of  millions  of  small  sums  from  the  whole  population,  not 
to  the  aggregate  of  a  few  big  sums  from  the  millionaires. 

In  this  connection  the  movement  of  the  current  rate 
of  interest,  regarding  that  rate  as  a  stimulus  to  saving,  is 
a  very  interesting  and  important  phenomenon.  If  we 
knew  more  about  the  causes  of  the  fluctuations  of  the 


350       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

interest  rate  we  should  gain  a  deeper  insight  than  we  now 
possess  into  some  of  the  operations  of  the  industrial 
system;  especially  we  should  gain  a  text  which  we  very 
much  need  for  the  effects  of  legislation  and  taxes.  The 
rate  at  present  favors  the  borrower,  not  the  depositor. 
If  such  a  tendency  of  the  rate  was  a  result  of  an  accumula- 
tion of  capital  more  rapid  than  the  extension  of  enterprise, 
it  would  no  doubt  be  advantageous;  it  would  bring 
about  a  reaction  which  would  produce  readjustments 
and  would  be  ultimately  healthful.  I  find  it  difficult  to 
conceive  of  an  increase  of  capital  in  excess  of  the  extension 
of  enterprise,  under  the  circumstances  of  industry  and  of 
public  temper  which  characterize  our  society.  The  fact 
that  the  interest  rate  is  as  low  here  as  in  Western  Europe, 
or  even  lower,  seems  to  me  to  be  abnormal  and  even 
irrational.  It  seems  to  me  to  point  to  errors  of  legisla- 
tion. Our  people  have  been  congratulating  themselves 
for  two  years  on  an  enormous  balance  of  trade  in  our  favor. 
We  have  had  large  crops  of  cereals  when  other  people 
had  small  ones,  and  so  we  have  sold  the  whole  at  high 
prices;  and  the  consequence  is  that  we  have  paid  our  debts, 
have  got  out  of  bad  times  into  good  ones,  have  dispelled 
our  political  anxieties,  and  have  capital  out  in  Europe. 
But  when  we  try  to  draw  home  our  credits  we  find  that 
our  rate  of  interest  falls  —  within  a  year  we  have  seen  it 
fall  a  full  point.  I  find  one  statesman  quoted  in  a  news- 
paper as  saying:  "If  present  conditions  continue,  it  looks 
as  if  all  the  gold  in  the  world  will  come  into  the  United 
States."  That  is  probably  the  most  grotesque  notion 
that  could  enter  anybody's  head.  It  seems  clear  that  the 
fluctuation  which  we  have  experienced  does  not  correspond 
to  the  normal  action  of  the  forces  which  should  produce 
the  rate  of  interest,  and  that  the  effects  of  it  are  not 
subject  for  congratulation.     A  higher  rate  than  that  now 


THE  POWER  OF  CAPITAL  351 

prevailing  would  give  tone  to  the  money  market;  it 
would  be  a  benefit  to  small  investors;  it  would  remove 
perils  which  threaten  speculation,  and  would  lessen  the 
dangers  of  discount  banking;  it  would  be  a  benefit  to 
enterprise  by  giving  greater  steadiness  and  sobriety, 
especially  as  to  the  future;  it  would  restore  the  relation 
which  should  exist  between  a  new  country  and  old  ones. 
How  can  things  be  in  a  normal  and  healthful  condition 
when  we  cannot  earn  greater  interest  on  capital  in  a  new 
country  than  what  people  will  bid  for  it  in  old  ones? 

I  was  led  to  notice  the  rate  of  interest  because  I  was 
speaking  of  the  possible  increase  in  the  accumulation  of 
capital  which  might  be  produced  if  the  motives  of  saving 
could  be  stimulated  throughout  the  mass  of  the  people. 
By  the  side  of  the  facts  to  which  I  have  referred,  and  which 
are  sometimes  interpreted  as  showing  that  the  formation 
of  capital  at  present  outstrips  the  extension  of  enterprise, 
there  are  other  facts  which  show  enormous  demand  for 
capital  on  account  of  unprecedented  extensions  of  enter- 
prise. It  is  idle  folly  to  meet  these  phenomena  with 
wailings  about  the  danger  of  the  accumulation  of  great 
wealth  in  few  hands.  The  phenomena  themselves  prove 
that  we  have  tasks  to  perform  which  require  large  aggre- 
gations of  capital.  Moreover,  the  capital,  to  be  effective, 
must  be  in  few  hands,  for  the  simple  reason  that  there 
are  very  few  men  who  are  able  to  handle  great  aggrega- 
tions of  capital.  This  is  also  the  reason  why  the  attempts 
to  execute  great  enterprises  by  the  state  or  municipality, 
that  is,  by  elected  oflBcers,  especially  in  a  democratic 
republic,  are  sure  to  be  wasteful  and  comparative  failures. 
The  men  who  are  competent  to  organize  great  enterprises 
and  to  handle  great  amounts  of  capital  must  be  found 
by  natural  selection,  not  by  political  election.  It  is 
plainly  childish  to  attack  those  elements  of  a  case  which 


352       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

are  essential  to  it.  If  the  aim  is  to  establish  tests  and 
guarantees,  or  regulations,  then  there  is  room  for  dis- 
cussion, but  it  is  evident  folly  to  say  that  we  want  a  cer- 
tain result  and  then  to  say  that  we  will  not  consent  to 
the  most  fundamental  conditions  of  what  we  want.  The 
aggregation  of  large  amounts  of  capital  in  few  hands  is 
the  first  condition  of  the  fulfilment  of  the  most  impor- 
tant tasks  of  civilization  which  now  confront  us.  K, 
therefore,  the  view  which  I  have  suggested  is  correct  — 
that,  in  spite  of  some  present  appearances  to  the  contrary, 
there  is  to  be,  in  the  near  future,  a  greatly  increased  de- 
mand for  capital  —  then  a  great  increase  of  the  popular 
desire  to  save  would  be  contributory  to  the  present  needs 
of  society. 

I  have  suggested,  in  this  paper,  that  the  savings  bank 
depositor  gets  an  education  and  development  of  char- 
acter from  the  practise  of  saving.  He  gets  a  point  of 
view  and  a  way  of  looking  at  things  which  are  substan- 
tially the  same  as  those  of  all  capitalists.  The  seats-full 
of  savings  bank  depositors  whom  I  mentioned  at  the 
outset  incurred  the  ire  of  the  agitator  because  they 
showed  this.  He  was  addressing  poor  men  and  men  of 
the  wages  class,  to  which  they  belonged,  but  instead  of 
responding  to  his  class  appeal  as  he  wanted  them  to  do, 
they  showed  the  sentiments  of  the  capitalist  class.  Hence 
his  dissatisfaction  with  them.  We  have  had  experience 
of  the  political  value  and  importance  of  the  same  con- 
servative sentiments  and  property  interests  of  the  small 
capitalists.  It  is  a  matter  for  regret  that  the  savings 
bank  depositor  does  not  know  more  about  the  invest- 
ment of  his  own  savings.  If  he  knew,  so  to  express  it, 
where  his  money  is,  how  it  is  being  used,  how  the  interest 
which  he  receives  is  won,  and  what  is  the  nature  of  the 
political  risks  and  perils  to  which  his  savings  may  be 


THE   POWER  OF  CAPITAL  35S 

exposed,   the   social   and   political   consequences   would 
be  most  beneficial. 

I  once  also  heard  another  orator  who  was  dilating  upon 
the  ills  of  life  declare  that  the  great  cause  of  human  woe 
was  the  "devil  of  interest."  There  is  no  doubt  that 
interest  is  an  awful  devil.  Your  feeling  towards  this 
devil,  however,  depends  on  whether  you  are  working  for 
him  or  he  is  working  for  you.  If  you  are  working  for 
him,  especially  if  you  have  bound  yourself  to  terms  which 
are  imprudent,  beyond  your  strength,  and  full  of  gam- 
bling risk,  then  he  is  an  awful  taskmaster.  You  dare 
not  eat,  or  sleep,  or  play.  Pay-day  seems  to  come  every 
other  day.  Instead  of  winning  release  by  work,  you 
may  see  your  load  grow  bigger  and  bigger,  in  spite  of  all 
you  do,  until  you  come  to  ruin.  Therefore,  when  you 
are  going  to  work  for  him,  which  we  all  have  to  do  some- 
times, you  must  be  sure  that  you  undertake  only  what 
you  can  accomplish  within  the  conditions  in  which  you 
find  yourself.  But  if  the  devil  of  interest  is  working  for 
you,  he  will  work  while  you  eat,  and  sleep,  and  play,  and 
while  you  work  to  earn  more.  You  must  be  careful  to 
have  him  well  harnessed  and  to  give  him  proper  super- 
intendence and  directions.  Then,  if  time  seems  to  you 
to  slip  away  rapidly,  and  if  old  age  comes  on  apace,  the 
devil  of  interest  will  give  you  the  only  consolation  you 
can  get  for  your  failing  powers.  When  you  turn  to  your 
savings  bank  book  you  will  see  that  your  capital  is  increas- 
ing just  as  rapidly  as  the  flight  of  time,  and  that  it  will  be 
ready  to  support  your  existence  when  your  abihty  to  work 
gives  out.  I  have  spoken  about  the  pyower  and  benefi- 
cence of  capital  to  maintain  civilization;  this  last  is  its 
power  and  beneficence  to  guide  the  fate  and  sustain  the 
happiness  of  the  individual. 


SOCIOLOGICAL  FALLACIES 


SOCIOLOGICAL  FALLACIES 

[1884] 

In  the  extension  of  modern  arts  and  industry  the  mass 
of  mankind  have  been  taught  to  expect  comfort  and  ease, 
if  not  luxury;  we  boast  so  constantly  of  what  we  have 
accomplished  in  this  direction  that  many  believe  we  can 
do  away  with  all  hardship  and  establish  universal  well- 
being,  if  we  choose.  In  our  discourses,  debates,  and 
discussions  we  assume  that  the  end  for  which  society 
exists  is  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number; 
it  is  laid  down  as  an  axiom  of  political  science  that  politi- 
cal institutions  should  produce  that  result.  Our  phi- 
losophers encourage  this  doctrine  and  encourage  the 
application  to  themselves  of  this  test.  It  is,  indeed, 
affirmed  that  our  civilization  is  a  failure  because  poverty 
continues  to  exist,  and  that  a  society  in  which  poverty 
continues  to  exist  is  fit  only  to  have  "war"  made  upon  it 
with  fire,  sword,  and  dynamite  by  any  one  who  is  still  p)oor. 
Yet  here  is  a  plain  question:  is  there  any  other  man  in 
the  world  who  is  to  blame  for  the  fact  that  I  am  poor? 

The  triumph  of  civilization  is  in  the  fact  that  we  are 
not  all  steeped  in  poverty  and  misery.  The  student  of 
sociology  is  more  and  more  appalled  as  he  goes  on  gaining 
fuller  knowledge  of  what  the  primitive  condition  of  man 
was,  and  a  more  definite  conception  of  what  human  life 
must  once  have  been.  A  missionary  who  resided  among 
the  Fuegians  heard  a  shouting  often  at  sunrise;  when 
he  asked  what  it  meant  he  was  told:  "People  very  sad; 
cry  very  much."     This  instinctive  and  childlike  howling 


358       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

with  which  they  greeted  a  new  day  of  misery  is  the  most 
pathetic,  and,  at  the  same  time,  most  rational  and  fit 
manifestation  which  we  should  exj)ect  to  find  among  such 
people.  Why  are  any  of  us  today  better  off  than  the 
Fuegians?  Why  are  we  not  sunk  in  misery  and  squalor, 
and  destitute  of  all  things  fitted  to  serve  human  need 
and  raise  men  out  of  slavery  to  nature?  The  triumph  of 
civilization  is  that  all  of  us  are  above  that  stage,  and 
that  some  of  us  are  emancipated  from  poverty. 

It  is  also  asserted  by  some  that  there  are  men  or  classes 
among  us  who  have  no  share  in  the  gains  of  civilization. 
Such  an  assertion  rests  on  a  great  misconception  of  facts. 
There  is  not  a  person  in  a  civilized  state  who  does  not 
share  in  the  inheritance  of  institutions,  knowledge,  ideas, 
doctrines,  etc.,  which  come  down  as  fruits  of  civilization; 
we  take  these  things  in  by  habit  and  routine,  and  suppose 
that  they  come  of  themselves,  or  are  innate.  It  would 
be  one  immense  gain  from  the  study  of  sociology  if  men 
should  learn  to  know  by  what  prodigious  struggles  all 
these  things  have  been  won.  Every  man  in  a  civilized 
state  inherits  a  status  of  rights  which  form  the  basis  and 
stay  of  his  civil  existence.  These  rights  are  often  called 
*' natural";  in  truth  they  are  the  product  of  the  struggles 
of  thousands  of  generations.  Men,  before  they  were 
capable  of  reflection  or  had  developed  science,  had  but 
one  process  for  learning:  that  was  by  their  mistakes  and 
at  the  price  of  all  their  experiments  which  failed.  Our 
inheritance  of  established  rights  is  the  harvested  product 
of  the  few  successful  experiments  out  of  thousands  which 
failed. 

If  we  turn  to  look  at  capital,  the  case  is  not  different. 
Every  item  of  capital  is  productive  of  utilities  which  are 
immeasurable  in  amount  and  broad  in  variety;  only  a 
few  of  the  simplest  of  them  can  be  appropriated  by  the 


SOCIOLOGICAL  FALLACIES  S59 

man  who  "owns"  the  capital.  A  man  who  tilled  the 
ground  was  already  comparatively  far  up  in  civilization. 
He  began  with  a  pointed  stick  or  the  horn  of  an  animal; 
by  thousands  of  years  of  experiment  and  invention  a 
spade  was  perfected.  How  can  we  measure  the  utility 
of  a  spade  as  compared  with  that  of  the  pointed  stick  or 
the  horn?  That  question  would  include  the  greater  power 
of  production  of  the  spade  and  also  the  lessened  pain  and 
toil  of  the  laborer.  Now,  if  A  owns  a  spade  today,  can 
he  make  B,  who  has  none,  pay  him  for  the  use  of  the 
spade  an  amount  in  any  sense  proportioned  to  the  advan- 
tage of  using  a  spade  as  compared  with  using  a  pointed 
stick.?  Certainly  he  cannot.  Neither  can  A,  if  he  keeps 
his  spade,  in  any  manner  win  by  the  use  of  it  a  superiority 
over  his  neighbors  to  be  measured  by  the  superiority  of 
the  spade  to  the  stick.  All  but  a  small  margin  of  the 
gains  of  civilization  enters  into  a  common  stock  which 
nobody  can  appropriate;  it  goes  to  make  up  a  kind  of 
industrial  atmosphere  around  every  one  born  into  the 
society.  Though  a  man  may  never  have  handled  a  plow, 
he  gets  his  food  under  the  conditions  of  a  society  which 
possesses  plows;  another  may  never  have  handled  a  pen 
or  a  type,  but  he  gets  his  reading  matter  imder  the  same 
conditions  as  a  man  who  has  pens  and  types.  The  same 
is  true  of  every  item  of  capital.  Knowledge  of  the  facts 
of  history  enables  us  to  see  when  we  look  at  a  coin,  a 
knife,  a  lead-pencil,  a  match,  a  book,  a  lock,  a  coat,  the 
product  of  thousands  of  generations  of  tireless  efforts  to 
serve  human  needs  more  completely  and  easily  with  the 
materials  offered  by  the  earth. 

What  we  might  call  the  metaphysical  side  of  capital  is 
its  most  important  side  in  the  history  of  civilization. 
Every  bit  of  capital  presents  devices,  methods,  pro- 
cesses, which  are  of  general  application.     If  one  of  us 


360       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

has  a  task  to  perform  he  unconsciously  begins  to  review 
the  various  processes  or  devices  with  which  he  is  f amihar, 
to  see  if  he  cannot  employ  one  of  them.  Springs,  catches, 
levers,  cams,  etc.,  are  presented  to  us  all  the  time  in  capital 
which  we  do  not  own;  the  devices  are  available  for  new 
applications.  He  who  owns  the  capital  cannot  appro- 
priate these;  his  use  of  capital  is  only  the  most  primary 
and  simple  of  all  the  utilities  which  it  oflfers,  and  he 
cannot  get  out  those  utilities  without  entering  into  co- 
operation and  exchange  with  his  neighbors  through  which 
they  share  the  primary  utilities.  It  is  interesting  to 
watch  children  at  play,  to  see  the  uses  to  which  they 
put  their  toys,  the  combinations,  plans,  devices,  and  pro- 
cesses which  they  will  work  out;  to  notice  how  they  use 
what  they  have  seen,  how  they  collect  experience  of  the 
qualities  of  substances,  how  they  bring  all  their  knowl- 
edge, to  bear;  and  to  reflect  that  they  possess  at  five  or 
six  years  of  age  a  store  of  facts,  knowledge,  skill,  and  the 
like  which  it  cost  the  human  race  thousands  of  years 
to  accumulate.  Most  grown  people  use  the  products  of 
civilization  as  unconsciously  as  children,  and  as  much  by 
habit  and  routine;  but  it  is  monstrous  ignorance,  when 
the  point  is  raised  for  discussion,  to  affirm  that  some 
now  do  not  share  in  the  fruits  of  civilization. 

If  any  one  is  still  unconvinced  of  what  I  have  here  said, 
let  him  try  to  cut  down  a  tree  with  a  flint  hatchet,  or  to 
produce  fire  with  a  fire  drill,  or  to  grind  corn  with  one 
stone  rubbed  on  another.  Intense  labor  kept  up  over  a 
long  period  was  the  price  of  everything  to  the  primitive 
man;  that  is,  he  worked  very  hard  and  got  very  little. 
If  a  modem  hod-carrier  had  to  work  a  fire  drill  until  he 
got  a  light,  and  if  he  could  then  strike  a  match  to  get 
another,  he  would  see  whether  he  had  any  share  in  the 
fruits  of  civilization. 


SOCIOLOGICAL  FALLACIES  361 

The  sentimentalists  sometimes  bewail  the  loss  of  skill 
due  to  machinery  and  division  of  labor.  The  fact  is  as 
alleged,  but  it  dates  from  a  point  much  further  back  than 
the  factory  system  —  it  dates  from  the  dawn  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  primitive  man  developed  great  skill  of  eye, 
hand,  and  ear,  because  his  tools  were  so  poor  that  the  wear 
all  came  on  his  nerves.  He  could  accomplish  nothing 
unless  his  skill  was  high;  the  man,  for  instance,  who 
had  to  fashion  a  flint  axe  by  flaking  off  pieces  under  great 
pressure  must  either  work  very  long  and  spoil  a  great 
many  or  be  very  skilful.  When  he  came  to  bore  a  hole 
in  it  with  a  piece  of  horn,  some  sand  and  water,  he  must 
work  long,  skilfully,  and  with  a  true  eye,  or  he  would 
spoil  his  whole  work.  A  Swiss  anthropologist  has  made 
a  stone  axe,  with  such  tools  as  a  primitive  man  possessed, 
j)olished  but  not  perforated,  in  five  hours  and  forty 
minutes  of  working  time  with  intervals  of  rest.  As 
tools  have  been  perfected,  men  have  put  the  work  on 
the  tools  and  spared  their  nerves.  Take,  for  comparison, 
the  manufacture  of  a  modern  axe,  which  requires  more 
skill  than  many  modem  processes.  In  saving  skill  we 
have  saved  men.  The  division  of  labor  does  not  probably 
lessen  skill,  but  it  concentrates  it  in  narrow  lines,  and 
produces  routine  and  monotony.  Poetry  is  what  really 
suffers,  but  the  loss  is  more  than  compensated  for  by 
poetry  in  literary  and  other  purer  forms;  we  can  spare 
poetry  from  industry  when  we  have  literature,  drama,  or 
art,  just  as  we  can  afford  to  use  bolted  flour  when  we 
have  a  meat  diet. 

Another  notion  for  which  there  is  no  foundation  in  fact 
is  that  there  was  more  liberty  in  early  ages  of  the  world 
or  in  simpler  societies  than  there  now  is;  that  is,  liberty 
in  the  sense  of  freedom  from  restraint  upon  choice  or 
caprice.     The  primitive  man  had  no  liberty  in  this  sense 


362       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

or  any  other.  He  was  a  slave  to  nature,  and  that  meant 
that  he  was  in  continual  terror  before  dangers  which  he 
did  not  know,  could  not  measure,  and  could  not  guard 
against.  All  that  we  learn  of  primitive  races  shows  us 
that  nature  is  appalling  to  them;  they  have  intelligence 
enough  to  believe  more  and  fear  more  than  brutes.  If 
we  look  at  their  social  regulations  we  find  that  these 
fetter  the  individual  in  relentless  traditions  and  rules. 
The  impulsiveness,  waywardness,  and  self-will  of  the 
savage  are  delusive  if  they  are  regarded  as  manifestations 
of  liberty.  The  development  of  individual  liberty,  and 
its  reconciliation  with  social  order,  is  one  of  the  grandest  of 
those  developments  of  original  antagonism  into  the  ulti- 
mate harmony  which  go  to  make  up  civilization.  We 
have  not,  however,  by  civilization  emancipated  individual 
choice  and  caprice;  the  civilized  man  has  won  the  social 
harmony  by  submitting  to  orderly  and  regular  industry, 
under  which  a  savage  would  pine  and  die  just  as  surely 
as  a  cotton  operative  would  perish  in  Patagonia  or 
Greenland. 

Now,  the  achievements  of  the  human  race  have  been 
accomplished  by  the  elite  of  the  race;  there  is  no  ground 
at  all  in  history  for  the  notion  that  the  masses  of  mankind 
have  provided  the  wisdom  and  done  the  work.  There 
are,  in  this  whole  region  of  thought,  a  vast  mass  of  dogmas 
and  superstitions  which  will  have  to  be  corrected  either 
by  hard  thinking  or  great  suffering.  A  man  is  good  for 
something  only  so  far  as  he  thinks,  knows,  tries,  or  works. 
If  we  put  a  great  many  men  together,  those  of  them  who 
carry  on  the  society  will  be  those  who  use  reflection  and 
forethought,  and  exercise  industry  and  self-control. 
Hence  the  dogma  that  all  men  are  equal  is  the  most 
flagrant  falsehood  and  the  most  immoral  doctrine  which 
men  have  ever  believed;  it  means  that  the  man  who  has 


SOCIOLOGICAL  FALLACIES  363 

not  done  his  duty  is  as  good  as  the  one  who  has  done  his 
duty,  and  it  takes  away  all  sense  from  the  teachings  of 
the  moralists,  when  they  instruct  youth  that  men  who 
pursue  one  line  of  action  will  go  down  to  loss  and  shame, 
and  those  who  pursue  another  course  will  go  up  to  honor 
and  success.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  doctrine  of  the  first 
moral  and  sociological  importance  that  truth,  wisdom, 
and  righteousness  come  only  by  painstaking,  study,  and 
striving.  These  things  are  so  hard  that  it  is  only  the  few 
who  attain  to  them.  These  few  carry  on  human  society 
now  as  they  always  have  done. 

Hence  we  see  that  so  soon  as  the  exigencies  of  life  are 
felt,  men  are  differentiated  according  to  their  power  to 
cope  with  them  into  "better"  or  "worse"  with  reference 
to  personal  and  social  value;  and  as  soon  as  any  conquest 
is  achieved  which  contributes  to  civilization,  the  inequahty 
between  the  men  who  won  it  and  those  who  did  not  win 
it  is  established  as  a  positive  fact.  Men  are  very  unequal 
in  what  they  get  out  of  life,  but  they  are  still  more  unequal 
in  what  they  put  into  it.  The  most  unequal  bargain  has 
always  been  made  by  the  men  who  have  done  the  world's 
thinking  for  it. 

In  nothing  have  we,  as  yet,  made  so  little  progress  as 
in  the  art  of  civil  government,  or,  more  generally,  in  our 
political  organization.  We  have  abandoned  hereditary 
government  because  we  regard  it  as  illogical;  it  affords 
no  guarantees  that  fit  persons  will  hold  power;  it  is  stable, 
but  it  is  not  flexible  or  plastic.  Have  we,  however,  as 
yet  produced  political  methods  imder  democratic-repub- 
lican government  which  afford  us  any  guarantees  that 
fit  persons  alone  will  obtain  power?  It  is  very  certain 
that  we  have  not  done  this.  We  do  not  fear  for  the  sta- 
bility of  the  civil  organization.  We  desire  flexibility  and 
plasticity,  but  if  we  have  lost  the  notion  of  fitness  alto- 


364       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

gether,  and  are  irritated  by  it  when  it  is  brought  to  our 
notice,  we  have  made  no  step  in  advance. 

The  fact  is,  that  the  vague  encouragement  which  has 
been  given,  for  a  century,  to  impossible  dreams  and  sense- 
less ambitions  has  produced  social  problems  with  which 
our  sociology  is  in  no  position  to  cope.  How  far  we  are 
from  it  may  be  judged  when  we  find  it  asserted  that  the 
end  of  society  is  justice.  To  ask  what  is  the  end  of  man, 
or  society,  or  the  earth,  is  to  put  a  teleological  or  theologi- 
cal problem.  Such  a  problem  has  been  discussed  in  regard 
to  man;  if  it  has  ever  been  discussed  in  regard  to  society, 
it  is  at  least  new.  It  is  also  idle.  The  scientific  view 
of  the  matter  is  that  a  thing  exists  for  reasons  which  lie 
in  its  antecedents  and  causes,  not  in  its  purposes  or 
destiny.  Human  society  exists  because  it  is,  and  has 
come  to  be  on  earth  because  forces  which  were  present 
must  produce  it.  It  is,  therefore,  utterly  unscientific 
to  regard  man  or  society  as  a  means  to  any  further  end. 
The  state  exists  to  provide  justice,  but  the  state  is  only 
one  among  a  number  of  social  organizations.  It  is 
parallel  with  the  others,  and  has  its  own  functions.  To 
confuse  the  state  with  society  is  to  produce  a  variety  of 
errors,  not  the  least  of  which  is  to  smuggle  statecraft  into 
political  economy.  It  is  plain  that,  until  such  courses  of 
confusion  are  put  entirely  beyond  the  pale  of  social 
discussions,  our  social  science  cannot  make  very  rapid 
progress.  The  sources  of  confusion  lie  at  the  very  be- 
ginning, and  they  vitiate  our  political  economy  and 
political  science  into  their  remotest  developments.  An 
attentive  study  of  any  of  the  current  controversies  will 
show  that  they  arise  from  fundamentally  confused  or 
erroneous  notions  of  society,  and  that  they  cannot  be 
solved  without  a  rectification,  on  a  scientific  basis,  of  our 
data  and  our  doctrines  about  human  life  on  this  earth. 


WHAT  OUR  BOYS  ARE  READING 


WHAT  OUR  BOYS  ARE  READING 

[1880] 

Few  gentlemen  who  have  occasion  to  visit  news  offices 
can  have  failed  to  notice  the  periodical  literature  for 
boys,  which  has  been  growing  up  during  the  last  few  years. 
The  increase  in  the  number  of  these  papers  and  maga- 
zines, and  the  appearance  from  time  to  time  of  new 
ones  which,  to  judge  by  the  pictures,  are  always  worse 
than  the  old,  seem  to  indicate  that  they  find  a  wide  mar- 
ket. Moreover,  they  appear  not  only  among  the  idle 
and  vicious  boys  in  great  cities,  but  also  among  school- 
boys whose  parents  are  careful  about  the  influences 
brought  to  bear  on  their  children.  No  student  of  social 
phenomena  can  pass  with  neglect  facts  of  this  kind  — 
so  practical  and  so  important  in  their  possible  effects  on 
society. 

These  periodicals  contain  stories,  songs,  mock  speeches, 
and  negro  minstrel  dialogues  —  and  nothing  else.  The 
literary  material  is  either  intensely  stupid,  or  spiced  to 
the  highest  degree  with  sensation.  The  stories  are  about 
hunting,  Indian  warfare,  California  desperado  life,  pirates, 
wild  sea  adventure,  highwaymen,  crimes  and  horrible 
accidents,  horrors  (tortures  and  snake  stories),  gamblers, 
practical  jokes,  the  life  of  vagabond  boys,  and  the  wild 
behavior  of  dissipated  youths  in  great  cities.  This  cata- 
logue is  exhaustive  —  there  are  no  other  stories.  The 
dialogue  is  short,  sharp,  and  continuous.  It  is  broken  by 
the  minimum  of  description  and  by  no  preaching.  It 
is  almost  entirely  in  slang  of  the  most  exaggerated  kind. 


368       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  of  every  variety  —  that  of  the  sea,  of  California,  and 
of  the  Bowery;  of  negroes,  "Dutchmen,"  Yankees, 
Chinese,  and  Indians,  to  say  nothing  of  that  of  a  score 
of  the  most  irregular  and  questionable  occupations  ever 
followed  by  men.  When  the  stories  even  nominally 
treat  of  school-life  they  say  nothing  of  school-liie.  There 
is  simply  a  succession  of  practical  jokes,  mischief,  out- 
rages, heroic  but  impossible  feats,  fighting  and  horrors, 
but  nothing  about  the  business  of  school,  any  more  than 
if  the  house  in  which  the  boys  live  were  a  summer  board- 
ing-house. The  sensational  incidents  in  these  stories  are 
introduced  by  force,  apparently  for  the  mere  purpose  of 
producing  a  highly  spiced  mixture. 

One  type  of  hero  who  figures  largely  in  these  stories  is 
the  vagabond  boy  in  the  streets  of  a  great  city,  in  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  or  at  sea.  Sometimes  he  has  some 
cleverness  in  singing,  or  dancing,  or  ventriloquism,  or 
negro  acting,  and  he  gains  a  precarious  living  while  roving 
about.  This  vagabond  life  of  adventure  is  represented 
as  interesting  and  enticing,  and  when  the  hero  rises  from 
vagabond  life  to  flash  life,  that  is  represented  as  success. 
Respectable  home  life,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  depicted 
at  all  and  is  only  referred  to  as  stupid  and  below  the 
ambition  of  a  clever  youth.  Industry  and  economy  in 
some  regular  pursuit,  or  in  study,  are  never  mentioned 
at  all.  Generosity  does  not  consist  in  even  luxurious 
expenditure,  but  in  wasting  money.  The  type  seems 
to  be  that  of  the  gambler,  one  day  "flush"  and  wasteful, 
another  day  ruined  and  in  misery. 

There  is  another  type  of  boy  who  sometimes  furnishes 
the  hero  of  a  story,  but  who  also  figures  more  or  less  in 
all  of  them.  That  is  the  imp  of  mischief  —  the  sort  of 
boy  who  is  an  intolerable  nuisance  to  the  neighborhood. 
The  stories  are  told  from  the  standpoint  of  the  boy,  so 


WHAT  OUR  BOYS  ARE  READING  369 

that  he  seems  to  be  a  fine  fellow,  and  all  the  world,  which 
is  against  him,  is  unjust  and  overbearing.  His  father, 
the  immediate  representative  of  society,  executes  its 
judgments  with  the  rod,  which  again  is  an  insult  to  the 
high-spirited  youth  and  produces  on  his  side  either  open 
war  or  a  dignified  retreat  to  some  distant  region. 

These  stories  are  not  markedly  profane,  and  they  are 
not  obscene.  They  are  indescribably  vulgar.  They  rep- 
resent boys  as  engaging  all  the  time  in  the  rowdy  type 
of  drinking.  The  heroes  are  either  swaggering,  vulgar 
swells  of  the  rowdy  style,  or  they  are  in  the  vagabond 
mass  below  the  rowdy  swell.  They  are  continually 
associating  with  criminals,  gamblers,  and  low  people  who 
live  by  their  wits.  The  theater  of  the  stories  is  always 
disreputable.  The  proceedings  and  methods  of  persons 
of  the  criminal  and  disreputable  classes  who  appear  in 
the  stories,  are  all  described  in  detail,  so  that  the  boy 
reader  obtains  a  theoretical  and  hterary  acquaintance 
with  methods  of  fraud  and  crime.  Sometimes  drunken- 
ness is  represented  in  its  disgrace  and  misery  but  gener- 
ally drinking  is  represented  as  jolly  and  entertaining,  and 
there  is  no  suggestion  that  boys  who  act  as  the  boys  in 
these  stories  do  ever  have  to  pay  any  penalty  for  it  in 
after  life.  The  persons  who  are  held  up  to  admiration 
are  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  bar  rooms,  concert  saloons, 
variety  theaters,  and  negro  minstrel  troupes. 

A  few  illustrations  may  serve  to  bring  out  some  of  the 
foregoing  statements.  One  of  the  school  stories  before 
us  has  a  "local  color"  which  is  purely  English,  although 
the  names  are  Americanized.  The  mixture  is  ridiculous 
in  the  extreme.  The  hero  is  the  son  of  a  "country  gentle- 
man "  of  Ohio,  and  comes  to  school  with  an  old  drunkard, 
"ex-butler"  of  the  Ohio  country  gentleman,  whom  he 
allows  to  join  him  at  the  Grand  Central  Depot.     This 


370       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

scandalous  old  rascal  is  kept  in  the  story  apparently 
because  an  old  drunkard  is  either  a  good  instrument  or 
a  good  victim  for  practical  jokes.  The  hero  goes  to  dine 
with  a  gentleman  whose  place,  near  the  school,  is  called 
the  "Priory."  While  waiting  for  dinner  he  goes  out  for 
a  stroll  in  the  "Park."  He  rescues  a  girl  from  drowning, 
sends  back  to  school  for  another  suit  of  clothes,  goes  out 
again  and  takes  a  ride  on  a  bison,  is  thrown  oflF,  strikes, 
in  falling,  a  professor,  who  is  fortunately  fat  enough  to 
break  his  fall,  goes  to  the  "snake  house"  with  the  pro- 
fessor, is  fascinated  by  the  rattlesnake  which  gets  loose, 
seizes  the  reptile  and  throws  it  away  after  it  has  bitten 
through  the  professor's  trousers  —  all  before  dinner. 
All  the  teachers,  of  course,  are  sneaks  and  blackguards. 
In  this  same  story,  one  of  the  assistant  teachers  (usher, 
he  is  called)  gets  drunk  and  insults  the  principal,  where- 
upon the  latter,  while  he  directs  some  of  the  boys  to 
work  a  garden  pump,  holds  the  nozzle  and  throws  water 
on  the  assistant,  who  lies  helplessly  drunk  on  the  grass 
—  all  of  which  is  enforced  by  a  picture.  There  is  not  a 
decent  good  boy  in  the  story;  there  is  not  even  the  old 
type  of  sneaking  good  boy.  The  sneaks  and  bullies  are 
all  despicable  in  the  extreme.  The  heroes  are  continually 
devising  mischief  which  is  mean  and  cruel,  but  which  is 
here  represented  as  smart  and  funny.  They  all  have  a 
daredevil  character,  and  brave  the  principal's  rod  as 
one  of  the  smallest  dangers  of  life.  There  is  a  great  deal 
of  the  traditional  English  brutality  in  exaggerated  forms. 
The  nearest  approach  to  anything  respectable  is  that 
after  another  boy  has  been  whipped  for  mischief  done  by 
the  hero,  the  latter  tells  an  accomplice  that  they  ought  to 
have  confessed,  whereat  the  friend  replies  with  the  crush- 
ing rejoinder  that  then  there  would  only  have  been  three 
flogged  instead  of  one. 


WHAT  OUR  BOYS  ARE  READING  371 

A  character  very  common  in  these  stories  is  the  city 
youth,  son  of  a  rich  father  who  does  not  give  his  son 
as  much  pocket-money  as  the  latter  considers  suitable. 
This  constitutes  stinginess  on  the  father's  part,  although 
it  might  be  considered  pardonable,  seeing  that  these 
young  men  drink  champagne  every  day,  treat  the  crowd 
generally  when  they  drink,  and  play  billiards  for  one 
hundred  dollars  a  game.  The  father,  in  this  class  of 
stories,  is  represented  as  secretly  vicious  and  hypocritic- 
ally pious.  In  the  specimen  of  this  class  before  us  the 
young  man  is  "discovered"  in  the  police  court  as  a 
prisoner,  whence  he  is  remanded  to  the  Tombs.  He  has 
been  arrested  for  collaring  a  big  policeman,  to  prevent 
him  from  overtaking  a  girl  charged  with  pocket-picking. 
He  interfered  because  he  judged  from  the  girl's  face  that 
she  was  innocent,  and  it  is  suggested,  for  future  develop- 
ment in  the  story,  that  she  was  running  away  from  insult 
and  that  the  cry  of  "stop  thief"  was  to  get  help  from  the 
police  and  others  to  seize  her.  The  hero,  who  is  in  prison 
under  an  assumed  name,  now  sends  for  his  father's  clerk 
and  demands  one  thousand  dollars,  saying  that  otherwise 
he  will  declare  his  real  name  and  disgrace  his  family.  He 
gets  the  money.  He  then  sends  for  a  notorious  Tombs 
lawyer,  to  whom  he  gives  five  hundred  dollars,  and  with  this 
sum  his  release  is  easily  procured.  He  then  starts  with  his 
cousin  to  initiate  the  latter  into  life  in  New  York.  They 
go  to  a  thieves'  college,  where  they  see  a  young  fellow  grad- 
uated —  his  part  consists  in  taking  things  from  the  pockets 
of  a  hanging  figure,  to  the  garments  of  which  bells  are 
attached,  without  causing  the  bells  to  ring.  Of  this  a 
full-page  illustration  is  given.  The  two  young  men  then 
go  up  the  Bowery  to  a  beer  saloon,  where  the  hero  sus- 
tains his  character  by  his  vulgar  familiarity  with  the  girl 
waiters.    Next  they  hear  a  row  in  a  side  street;  they 


372       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

find  a  crowd  collected  watching  a  woman  who  hangs  from 
a  third-story  window,  while  her  drunken  husband  beats 
and  cuts  her  hands  to  make  her  fall.  The  hero  solves 
this  situation  by  drawing  his  revolver  and  shooting  the 
man.  As  he  and  his  companion  withdraw  unobserved, 
the  former  wards  ofif  the  compliments  of  the  latter  by 
saying  modestly  that  he  could  not  bear  to  stand  there 
and  see  such  a  crowd  looking  on  and  not  knowing  what 
to  do,  so  he  just  did  the  proper  thing.  Next  day  the  hero, 
meeting  the  thieves'  college  graduate  in  the  corridor  of 
the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel,  agrees  to  receive  and  hold  for 
him  any  booty  he  may  seize  in  the  bar  room,  which  he 
does.  At  night  he  and  his  friend  go  to  a  disreputable 
masked  ball,  where  the  hero  recognizes  his  father  in  dis- 
guise amongst  the  dancers.  Securing  a  place  in  the 
same  set,  during  a  pause  in  the  dance  he  snatches  the 
mask  from  his  own  face  and  his  father's  at  the  same 
moment.  This  edifying  incident  is  enforced  by  a  full- 
page  illustration.  A  friend  suggests  the  question:  what 
demon  of  truthfulness  makes  the  artist  put  such  brutal 
and  vulgar  faces  on  the  men.'^  In  this  class  of  stories, 
fathers  and  sons  are  represented  as  natural  enemies, 
and  the  true  position  for  the  son  is  that  of  suspicion  and 
armed  peace. 

Here,  again,  is  a  story  of  a  boy  who  was  left  in 
charge  of  a  country  grocery  store.  To  amuse  his  leisure 
he  takes  a  lump  of  butter  from  the  stock  and  greases 
the  platform  in  front  of  the  store.  Several  village  char- 
acters, among  them  an  old  maid,  the  parson,  and  the 
squire,  come  to  perform  on  this  arena  for  the  amusement 
of  the  youth  and  one  or  two  of  his  friends.  While  the 
squire  is  trying  to  get  up  or  get  off  the  platform,  the  owner 
of  the  grocery  returns  and  he  and  the  squire  have  a  fight 
on  the  grass-plot  over  the  question  whether  the  grocer 


WHAT  OUR  BOYS  ARE  READING  373 

greased  his  own  platform  or  not.  Next  comes  Nemesis 
in  the  shape  of  the  boy's  father.  The  conversation 
between  these  two,  and  the  denouement,  may  be  worth 
quoting.  In  the  soliloquy  at  the  end  there  seems  to  be  a 
reminiscence  of  Fisk. 

"James,"  said  he,  "you  are  breaking  my  heart  with 
your  incorrigible  conduct." 

"Is  dat  a  chowder-gag.'*"  calmly  inquired  Jimmy. 

"Slang  —  slang,  always  slang!"  groaned  his  father. 
"James,  will  you  never  reform.?" 

"Don't  wanter;  I'm  good  enough  now." 

"Think  of  what  you  might  be,  a  pattern  boy,  a  — " 

"Brass-bound  angel,  silver-plated  cherub,  little  tin 
missionary  on  rollers,"  put  in  Jimmy,  apparently  in  con- 
fidence to  a  fly  on  the  ceiling. 

"Actually  sassing  his  protector,"  the  deacon  said. 
"Oh,  James,  you  wicked  son  of  BeHal." 

"Pop's  name  was  Dennis,  and  he  was  a  short-haired 
Cincinnati  ham,"  indignantly  corrected  Jimmy.  "I  don't 
know  anybody  named  Belial." 

The  deacon  made  a  horrified  mouth. 

"Will  you  never  hearken  in  quietude  and  meekness  of 
spirit  to  words  of  reproval  and  advice.?  "  said  he. 

"Darned  sight  ruther  listen  to  funny  stories,"  muttered 
Jimmy. 

"You  are  hopeless,"  sighed  the  deacon,  "and  I  shall 
have  to  chastise  you." 

"Dat  means  a  week's  soreness,"  Jimmy  reflected;  then 
he  changed  his  tune.  "Let  me  off  this  time,  dad,  and 
I'll  be  the  best  boy  you  ever  saw  after  dis.  Stay  in 
nights,  stop  chewing  tobacco,  clean  my  teeth  every  morn- 
ing, and  welt  the  life  out  of  anybody  dat  won't  say  their 
prayers  regular  and  go  to  church  every  day  in  the  week." 

The  deacon  nodded  his  head  the  wrong  way. 


374       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

"You  can't  play  that  on  the  old  man  again,"  he  said; 
"it's  lost  its  varnish,  it's  played  out.     Step  up,  my  son.'* 

Unwillingly  Jimmy  stepped  up. 

In  a  moment  he  was  stepping  up  more  than  ever,  for 
the  deacon  was  pelting  him  all  over  with  a  stout  switch, 
which  felt  the  reverse  of  agreeable. 

But  finally  he  was  released  and  crawled  dolefully  up 
to  bed. 

There  are  things  nicer  than  going  to  bed  at  four  o'clock 
on  a  bright,  breezy,  fall  day,  and  Jimmy  knew  so. 

"This  here  is  getting  awful  stale,"  he  meditated,  rolling 
and  tossing  in  his  cot,  "and  you  can  smother  me  with 
fish-cakes  if  I  stand  it.  I'm  going  to  run  away,  and 
come  back  to  dis  old  one-hoss  town  when  I'm  a  man,  in 
a  gold-band  wagon  with  silver  wheels  and  six  Maltese 
mules  a-drawing  it.  Probably  the  old  man  will  be  in 
the  poorhouse  then,  swallerin'  shadow  soup  with  an  iron 
spoon,  and  it  will  make  him  cranky  to  think  dat  he  didn't 
used  ter  let  me  have  my  own  way  and  boss  things.  Yes, 
by  golly,  I'll  give  him  the  sublime  skip." 

The  songs  and  dialogues  are  almost  all  utterly  stupid. 
The  dialogues  depend  for  any  interest  they  have  on  the 
most  vapid  kind  of  negro  minstrel  buffoonery.  The 
songs,  without  having  any  distinct  character,  seem  often 
to  be  calculated  to  win  applause  from  tramps  and  rioters. 
The  verse,  of  all  before  us,  which  has  the  most  point  to  it,  is 
the  following.     What  the  point  is  requires  no  elucidation: 

Boss  Tweed  is  a  man  most  talked  about  now. 
His  departure  last  winter  caused  a  great  row; 
Of  course  we  all  knew  it  was  not  a  square  game. 
But  show  me  the  man  who  would  not  do  the  same. 

When  Sweeney,  Genet  and  Dick  Connolly  took  flight. 
He  stood  here  alone  and  made  a  good  fight; 
He  did  wrong,  but  when  poor  men  were  greatly  in  need. 
The  first  to  assist  them  was  William  M.  Tweed. 


WHAT  OUR  BOYS  ARE  READING  375 

From  the  specimens  which  we  have  examined  we  may 
generalize  the  following  in  regard  to  the  views  of  life 
which  these  stories  inculcate  and  the  code  of  morals 
and  manners  which  they  teach. 

The  first  thing  which  a  boy  ought  to  acquire  is  phys- 
ical strength  for  fighting  purposes.  The  feats  of  strength 
performed  by  these  youngsters  in  combat  with  men  and' 
animals  are  ridiculous  in  the  extreme.  In  regard  to 
details  the  supposed  code  of  Enghsh  brutality  prevails, 
especially  in  the  stories  which  have  English  local  color, 
but  it  is  always  mixed  with  the  code  of  the  revolver,  and 
in  many  of  the  stories  the  latter  is  taught  in  its  fulness. 
These  youngsters  generally  carry  revolvers  and  use  them 
at  their  good  discretion;  every  youth  who  aspires  to 
manliness  ought  to  get  and  carry  a  revolver. 

A  boy  ought  to  cheat  the  penurious  father  who  does  not 
give  him  as  much  money  as  he  finds  necessary,  and  ought 
to  compel  him  to  pay.  A  good  way  to  force  him  to  pay 
liberally,  and  at  the  same  time  to  stop  criticizing  his  son's 
habits,  is  to  find  out  his  own  vices  (he  always  has  some) 
and  then  to  levy  blackmail  on  him.  Every  boy  who  does 
not  want  to  be  "green"  and  "soft,"  ought  to  "see  the 
elephant."  All  fine  manly  young  fellows  are  familiar  with 
the  actors  and  singers  at  variety  theaters  and  the  girl  wait- 
ers at  concert  saloons.  As  to  drinking,  the  bar  room  code 
is  taught.  The  boys  stop  in  at  bar  rooms  all  along  the 
street,  swallow  drinks  standing  or  leaning  with  rowdy  grace 
on  the  bar,  treat  and  are  treated,  and  consider  it  insulting 
to  refuse  or  to  be  refused.  The  good  fellows  meet  every 
one  on  a  footing  of  equality  —  above  all  in  a  bar  room. 

Quiet  home  life  is  stupid  and  unmanly;  boys  brought 
up  in  it  never  know  the  world  or  life.  They  have  to 
work  hard  and  to  bow  down  to  false  doctrines  which 
parsons  and  teachers  in  league  with  parents  have  invented 


376       EARTH  HUNGER  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

against  boys.  To  become  a  true  man,  a  boy  must  break 
with  respectability  and  join  the  vagabonds  and  the  swell 
mob.  No  fine  young  fellow  who  knows  life  need  mind 
the  law,  still  less  the  police  —  the  latter  are  all  stupid 
louts.  If  a  boy's  father  is  rich  and  has  money,  he  can 
easily  find  smart  lawyers  (advertisement  gratis)  who  can 
get  the  boy  out  of  prison  and  will  dine  with  him  at 
Delmonico's  afterward.  The  sympathies  of  a  manly 
young  fellow  are  with  criminals  against  the  law,  and  he 
conceals  crime  when  he  can.  Whatever  good  or  ill 
happens  to  a  young  man  he  should  always  be  gay;  —  the 
only  ills  in  question  are  physical  pain  or  lack  of  money 
and  these  should  be  borne  with  gaiety  and  indiflFerence, 
but  should  not  alter  the  philosophy  of  life. 

As  to  the  rod,  it  is  not  so  easy  to  generalize.  Teachers 
and  parents  in  these  stories  act  faithfully  up  to  Solo- 
mon's precept.  When  a  father  flogs  his  son,  the  true 
doctrine  seems  to  be  that  the  son  should  run  away  and 
seek  a  life  of  adventure.  When  he  does  this  he  has  no 
diflSculty  in  finding  friends,  or  in  living  by  his  wits,  so 
that  he  makes  money  and  comes  back  rich  and  glorious, 
to  find  his  father  in  the  poorhouse. 

These  periodicals  seem  to  be  intended  for  boys  from 
twelve  to  sixteen  years  of  age,  although  they  often  treat 
of  older  persons.  Probably  many  boys  outgrow  them 
and  come  to  see  the  folly  and  falsehood  of  them.  It  is 
impossible,  however,  that  so  much  corruption  should  be 
afloat  and  not  exert  some  influence.  We  say  nothing  of 
the  great  harm  which  is  done  to  boys  of  that  age,  by  the 
nervous  excitement  of  reading  harrowing  and  sensational 
stories,  because  the  literature  before  us  only  participates 
in  that  harm  with  other  literature  of  far  higher  pretensions. 
But  what  we  have  said  suffices  to  show  that  these  papers 
poison  boys'  minds  with  views  of  life  which  are  so  base 


WHAT  OUR  BOYS  ARE  READING  377 

and  false  as  to  destroy  all  manliness  and  all  chances  of 
true  success.  How  far  they  are  read  by  boys  of  good 
home  influences  we  are,  of  course,  unable  to  say.  They 
certainly  are  within  the  reach  of  all;  they  can  be  easily 
obtained,  and  easily  concealed,  and  it  is  a  question  for 
parents  and  teachers  how  far  this  is  done.  Persons 
under  those  responsibilities  ought  certainly  to  know  what 
the  character  of  this  literature  is. 


G8  4 

?  0  DATE  DUE 

MAR  : 

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RECD  F£ 

B  1  H  1968 

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30 

PECD  MAR  5 

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FEB 

2  2  1977 

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GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U.S.A. 

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